I 



RELIGION 
Its Prophets and False Prophets 

JAMES BISHOP THOMAS 




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RELIGION— ITS PROPHETS AND 
FALSE PROPHETS 



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RELIGION— ITS PROPHETS 
AND FALSE PROPHETS 



BY 
JAMES BISHOP THOMAS, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, IN THE UNIVERSITY OF 
THE SOUTH, SEWANEE, TENNESSEE 



JJeto gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1918 

All rights reserved 



Copyright, 191 8 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 191* 



MAY 23 ISI8 



©CI.A497528 



DEDICATED 

TO 
DOROTHEA AND LESLYE IDA 

TO 

THE MEMORY OF CLARE ROSAMOND 

TO 
VIRGINIA ST. JOHN AND MYRA AMELIA 

OUR CHILDREN 



A PERSONAL WORD 

The message in this book is one that has been 
seeking expression since the author's Seminary 
days at the Episcopal Theological School at Cam- 
bridge, Massachusetts — more than twenty years 
ago. 

Owing to the self-sacrificing co-operation of his 
mother — early left a widow — he was enabled to re- 
ceive his preparation for the ministry. It came at 
a time when the sense of the social implications of 
Christianity was beginning to be quickened and 
Prof. Nash was expressing to his pupils those views 
later embodied in his "Genesis of the Social Con- 
science." After three years of seemingly fruitless 
preaching of the social gospel, the sympathetic 
furtherance of his wife enabled the author to spend 
three years in Europe in further study. 

Germany was selected as offering the best oppor- 
tunities. The problem he proposed was — "How is 
the economic and social order to be reformed ac- 
cording to the Christian principle of the law of 
service?" So for two semesters at Berlin and for 
two and a half more at Halle the author studied 
economics under distinguished teachers. Ger- 
many had promised much. The science of u Sozial- 
politik" was developing a program for the material 
betterment of the masses from above; the Social 

vii 



viii A Personal Word 

Democratic party proposed a program for complete 
political and economic democratization. Between 
the two stood the mediating political party of Pas- 
tor Friedrich Naumann which was proposing a social 
reformation on the principles of the Gospel. 

But while the author was in Germany a reaction- 
ary change was in process. Naumann returned 
from the Palestine trip on which he had been the 
personal guest of the Kaiser — changed from a 
Christian Socialist to a Pan-Germanist. The the- 
ologians were reaching the conclusion that the 
teachings of Jesus belonged as a whole to a passed 
age. Johannes Weiss thought he had discovered 
that Jesus represented the fanatical Apocalyptism 
of His Own times and people. Harnack partly 
shared this view and was becoming convinced that 
in the pursuit of the tasks of Kultur the program of 
Jesus must be modified in the interest of a modern 
German morality. Papers read at the Evangelical 
Social Congresses showed this trend away from the 
acceptance of the authority of Jesus in social and 
political matters. He was explained away as a 
"Beautiful Spirit" rather than as a practical Leader 
of men. 

These tendencies were felt by the author and led 
him to give especial attention to the critical study 
of the " eschatological problem," with the result 
that he reached conclusions diametrically opposed to 
those that were then seeking acceptance. (See 
Chapters V, VI and VII.) He was led to these 
studies as a direct outcome of his interest in ascer- 



A Personal Word ix 

taining how far the teachings of the historic Jesus 
are in contact with modern social needs. 

While rector of St. Andrew's Church in Roches- 
ter, New York, the author became associated with 
the Rev'd. Dr. Paul Moore Strayer (now President 
of the Social Service Commission of the Presby- 
terian Church), author of the Reconstruction of the 
Church, and Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch — the well- 
known teacher and author of works on the Social 
Message of Christianity — in the movement known 
as "The People's Sunday Evening." From the 
stimulus of this association this work has profited 
greatly. Prof. Rauschenbusch's trenchant criti- 
cisms caused the book to be rewritten twice after 
the author thought it ready for publication. 

The call to teach in the Theological Department 
of the University of the South brought opportu- 
nities of association, and the academic vacations 
afforded the leisure, needed to give this work its 
present form. To his colleagues of the Theological 
Faculty he is indebted for stimulating criticisms and 
helpful suggestions. He owes his acquaintance with 
the writings of Prof. Howison (see Chapter VI) to 
Prof. T. P. Bailey, and at the instigation of Prof. H. L. 
Jewett Williams (at present serving as Captain in 
the United States forces) he restudied the Synoptic 
problem. Prof. John M. McBryde, Jr., head of the 
English Department of the University and Editor 
of the Sewanee Review, corrected faulty expres- 
sions and suggested improvements in style. 

As the work progressed and up to the time of its 



x A Personal Word 

completion great practical assistance was received 
from the author's friend and former parishioner, 
Miss D. Gurnee of Rochester, New York, who gen- 
erously placed her skill as a stenographer and type- 
writer at his disposal. 

James Bishop Thomas. 

Sewanee, Tenn., December 9, 19 17. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction. The Professional vs. the Amateur. 
§1. Temptations to Professionalism in Religion. §11. 
Opportunities for Exploitation of Religion. §111. Proph- 
ets, the Foes of the Religious Exploiters. §IV. The 
Conflict in Old Testament Passes into History of Chris- 
tianity. §V. The Object of this Book. §VI. Jesus and 
the Prophetic Religion. §VII. Rival Claimants to the 
Sanction of Jesus' Authority. §VIII. Our Subject Is Vital 
to the World's Greatest Issue Today. . . .Pages xvii-xxii 

Chapter I. Rise of the Jewish Priesthood. Intro- 
ductory. §1. Religion of the Nomad Semites. §11. A 
Lay Religion. §111. Sources of the Prophetic and 
Priestly Religions — Pia Fraus. §IV. Rise of Priestly 
Caste Pages 1-12 

Chapter II. The Rise of Prophetism. §1. Its 
Hereditary Origin. §11. Its Conflict with Its Oppo- 
site. §111. The Resulting Type of Prophetic Conscious- 
ness Pages 13-28 

Chapter III. Prophetic Theology and Ethic. 
§1. The Value of the Human Individual Discovered 
through Mystical Experience. §11. History, the Field 
for the Working Out of God's Plan. §111. Religious and 
Ethical Universalism. §IV. The Unity of God and Con- 
sequent Solidarity of Mankind. §V. The Divinely Ap- 
pointed Historic Destiny of Mankind — The Reign of 

God on Earth — Messianic Era 2 9~44 

xi 



xii Contents 

Chapter IV. The Priesthood Establishes a 
Monopoly and Developes a Legalistic Ethic and 
Priestly Theology — Priestly Exactions. §1. Amorite 
Shrines Basis of Israelite Priestly Colleges — Exploita- 
tion of Judicial Functions and Court Influence. §11. 
The Deuteronomic Conspiracy. §111. The False Proph- 
ets and Jeremiah. §IV. The Fruits of the Exile. §V. 
The Jewish Theocracy Supplants the Davidic Monarchy. 
§VI. Post Exilic Theology and Ethic. §VII. Priestly 
Emoluments Pages 45-64 

Chapter V. The Apocalypses Unmasked — Polit- 
ical Oppression as Historic Background — Gospel of 
Despair — Priestly Literary Devices. §1. Priestly The- 
ology of the Apocalypses. §11. The Persian and Jewish 
Apocalypses Compared. §111. Importance of True 
Interpretation of the Phrase "Son of Man" in Daniel. 
§IV. The Apocalyptic "Will to Exploit". . Pa^es 65-75 

Chapter VI. The Theology of Jesus — Introduc- 
tory — The Critical Problems — Affinity with Prophetic 
Theology. §1. Jesus' Estimate of the Value of the 
Human Individual — The Soul of a Child — The 
"Least Brother" — The Outcast and Lowly — The 
Gentile — Contrast with Contemporary Jewish Opinion 
— "Son of Man" — Man Lord of the Sabbath — Man 
Greater than the Temple — Prof. Howison Quoted — 
Rejection of the Quest for Personal Salvation. §11. 
Jesus Holds to Prophetic Interpretation of History as 
Field for Working Out God's Plan for Mankind. §111. 
The Universalism of Jesus. §IV. Jesus' Theology Con- 
trasts with Apocalyptic Theology. §V. Jesus and the 
Future World Community — Views of Schweitzer and 
K. Lake Examined — Jesus' Ethics and World Pro- 
gram Pages 76-101 



Contents xiii 

Chapter VII. "The Eschatological Problem" — 
Critical Considerations. §1. Early Traces of Jesus' 
Anti-Apocalyptic Polemic — Quest for External "Signs" 
Condemned — "The Sign of Jonah" Signifies Repent- 
ance — An Internal Moral Sign — The Developmental 
Doctrine in "Q." §11. The Engrafting of Apocalyptic 
Matter Begins with the Disciples — Peter's Christus 
Futuras — The "Apocalypse of Jesus." §111. "The 
Great Apocalyptic Discourse" (Mk. XIII) — H. B. 
Streeter Quoted — Growth of the Apocalyptic Tradi- 
tion in Matthew and Luke. §IV. Matthean "Eschatol- 
ogizing" of Authentic Sayings of Jesus — Streeter — 
The "Apocalyptic Residuum" Pages 102-119 

Chapter VIII. The Historic Jesus— • The 
Prophet Messiah. §1. The Beginnings of Christological 
Development: i, Jesus Appears as Prophetic Herald of 
the Kingdom of God; ii, Jesus Preached as the "Messiah 
That Is to Come"; iii, Retrospectively Regarded as 
Made the Messiah at His Baptism; iv, At His Birth; 
v, The Pauline "Man from Heaven"; vi, The Eternal 
Logos, Messiah, The Crucial Problem, The Messianic 
Self-Consciousness of Jesus as Revealed by Modern 
Research. §11. The Career of the Prophet Messiah — 
Kinship with Insurgent Prophets — Denounces the 
Exploiters — Derides Ceremonial Righteousness and 
Legalism — Proclaims the Righteous Community — His 
Campaign Against the Temple Cult — His Messianic 
Claim Revealed in the "Cleansing of the Temple." 
§111. The Program of Jesus — His Own Office as Ini- 
tiator of the Reign of God — The " Johannine Passage" 
— The Militant Quality of His Mission — The Principle 
of Self-Sacrifice — His Absolute Ethic — - The Victory of 
the Cross Pages 120-148 



xiv Contents 

Chapter IX. The Followers of Jesus Substitute 
a Messianic Cult for His Brotherhood of the 
Kingdom — Introductory — The Initial Defeat of the 
Program of Jesus through the Tragic Misunderstanding 
of His Earliest Followers. §1. Reversion of the Jeru- 
salem Church to the Apocalyptic Delusion and Loss of 
Prophetic Religion and Ethic — McGiffert Quoted — 
Peter and His Group Practically Abandon the Teacher's 
Cause. §11. The "Hellenistic Deacons" Are the True 
Interpreters of Jesus' Doctrine — Contrast to the Apos- 
tles — Prophetic Elements in the Discourse of Stephen 

— A Prophet Martyr — And in the Discourse of Philip 

— Influence on Antioch and ' so on the Antiochene 
Prophets — Barnabas and Saul. §111. Paul — His At- 
tempted Synthesis of Opposing Religious Elements — 
Influence on the Expansion of the Cult — Paul, a 
"Hellenizing Syncretist" — Fails to Understand the 
Historic Significance of Jesus — His Affinity with the 
"Mystery Cults" — Percy Gardner Quoted — The Cult 
Principle Opposed to the Universal Type of Religion — 
Royce's Estimate Criticized —r Ephesian Christianity, in 
the Fourth Gospel — Metamorphoses the Universal 
Religion of the Prophet-Messiah into a Christo-Centric 
Mystery Cult Pages 149-168 

Chapter X. The Cult Becomes an Exploiting 
Ecclesiasticism — Introductory — External Organiza- 
tion and Spread of the Jesus Cult. §1. The Ministry in 
the Gentile Churches " Charismatic " — The Didache 
and Exploiting "Prophets." §11. The Oligarchical Type 
of Organization — "Heresies" — Ignatius and the Mon- 
archical Episcopate. §111. Growth of a "Clerical Con- 
sciousness" — "Bishops, Presbyters and Deacons" — 
Growing Opportunities for Exploitation. §IV. The Age 



Contents xv 

of Cyprian — Roman Legalism Grafted upon Jewish 
Legalism — Revival of Old Testament Ceremonialism 
and Hierarchical Notions — Harnack Quoted — Cyprian 
and the Priests' Code — He Becomes Chief Agent in 
Leading the Catholic Church into Complete Apostasy 
from the Religion of Jesus. §V. The Church now Ripe 
for the Exploiter. §VI. Through Its Deal with Con- 
stantine the Church Enters upon a Profitable Career of 
Exploitation Not Yet Ended — Appendix to Chapter X 

— Quoted from Henry Osborn Taylor. . .Pages 169-190 

Chapter XL Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 

— Introductory — Protestants Against the View^fthat 
Exploitation is a High Type of Piety. §1. Arnold of 
Brescia. §11. Francis of Assisi. §111. Dante — Maz- 
zini Quoted — Marsiglio of Padua and John of Jandun. 
§IV. Prophetic Movement in England — William Lang- 
land — His Prophetic Allegory — John Wycliffe — The 
Peasant Priests — Thorold Rogers Quoted. §V. The 
Prophets of Bohemia — Palacky Quoted. §VL The 
Prophetic Career of Savonarola — Vilari Quoted. §VII. 
The Oxford Reformers of 1496 Pages 19 1-2 13 

Chapter XII. The So-Called Reformation. In- 
troductory — Predominant Influence of Paulinism Re- 
stricts Reformation to the Cult — Excludes Reforma- 
tion of the Social Order. §1. Martin Luther. §11. 
Calvin. §111. The English Reformation Perpetuates 
the Exclusive Cult Idea by Preservation and Exaltation 
of the Episcopate — Perpetuation of System of Exploita- 
tion — The Martin Mar- Prelate Charges — Bishops 
Held in Contempt by Elizabeth — Froude Quoted. 
§IV. "Anabaptists" Recover the True Type of Chris- 
tianity and Attempt to Initiate the Social Reign of God 

— Persecuted by Protestants and Catholics Alike — 



xvi Contents 

Heath Quoted — The Moravian Community — The 
Program and Spirit of Jesus Again Quenched in a Bap- 
tism of Blood and Fire Pages 214-237 

Chapter XIII. The Recovery of a Lost Chris- 
tianity. §1. Present Crisis in Conflict Between the 
Exploiters and Prophets of Religion. §11. The Stake — 
Is the Present Hell on Earth to Continue or the Reign 
of God to Triumph. §111. Jesus Still the Spiritual Guide 
and Leader of the Forces of the Reign of God. §IV. The 
Lesser Cults Must be Dethroned and Universal Chris- 
tianity Restored, This the Only Practical Hope of 
World for Deliverance from Perpetual Wars — Hope 
from those Outside Historic Christianity. §V. The 
Present Futility of Existing Cults; They Could Help by 
Losing Their Lives for Christ's Sake and the Gospel's — ■ 
Royce Quoted — Possibilities of. §VI. Education. 
§VII. Family and Parish Community. §VIII. The 
Lord's Prayer. §IX. Personal Immortality and the Social 
Order. §X. Conclusion — The Supreme Need — Uni- 
versal Repentance and Reorganization of Individual 
and Social Life Under the Guidance of the Spirit of 
Jesus Pages 238-256 



INTRODUCTION 

The highest types of human activity, spiritual, 
mental or physical, proceed from an inward con- 
straint as their sufficient motive. Aspiration seeks 
attainment; thought impels to expression; the 
idea becomes the architect of its own enduring hab- 
itation. Virtue is not only its own reward but is 
its alone satisfying reward. It craves no other pay. 
It resents the offer of material reward as an affront 
— as imputing a hireling's motives to a true prophet. 

But besides his incentives to creative or co-crea- 
tive activity man has secondary and conditional 
requirements. These are commonly called the "ne- 
cessities of life." They are the necessities of 
physical life. The higher forms of activity — re- 
ligious, mental and artistic — often attract material 
rewards — and as these material things are required 
— and are often very gratifying — the man is under 
the constant temptation to regard the higher forms 
of activity as the legitimate means of procuring the 
material satisfactions. He is moved to make mer- 
chandise of the commodities of the spirit and if he 
yields he becomes a false prophet. 

A subtle simony becomes his pursuing demon. 
He has made his compact with Mephistopheles and 
has sold his own soul. The artist turns peddlar and 
exchanges his spiritual integrity for the flesh pots; 

2 xvii 



xviii Introduction 

the philosopher turns sophist — wins popular favor 
and loses his self-respect ; courtly love turns courte- 
san, and, most tragic of all, the prophet turns wiz- 
ard and divines for hire. 

The task of spiritualizing life consists primarily 
in placing all human activity and forms of service 
however humble in direct alignment with a central 
compelling spiritual motive that shall leaven the 
whole lump of individual and social activity. The 
professional or hireling must give place to the ama- 
teur or true lover. Ruskin has thus stated the 
issue: "It is the whole distinction in a man; dis- 
tinction between life and death in him, between 
heaven and hell for him. You cannot serve two 
masters; you must serve one or the other. If your 
work is first with you, and your fee second, work is 
your master and the Lord of work, Who is God. 
But if your fee is first with you, and your work 
second, fee is your master, and the lord of fee who 
is the Devil; and not only the Devil, but the lowest 
of Devils — 'the least erected fiend that fell.' So 
there you have it in brief terms: work first — you 
are God's servants; fee first — you are the Fiend's." 1 

In the following book I seek to state and trace 
the issue between the disinterested prophets of re- 
ligion and those who have sought or been led to 
professionalize religion as a means to a career. I 
try to show the type of religion developed by its 
true and enlightened lovers in contrast to the type 
of religion developed under the more or less uncon- 

iRuskin, "The Crown of Wild Olive"— Lecture I. 



Introduction xix 

scious or conscious "will to exploit" to the ends of 
personal, political, economic and caste aggrandize- 
ment. 

The resultant analysis reveals a pure and un- 
mixed type of a universal religion which is the core 
of Christianity. It separates the fundamental re- 
ligion from its accessories and foreign adhesions and 
shows it in action against the enemies of mankind. 
This work should thus have an emancipating effect 
upon the religious spirit of many who are bound by 
the fetters of a hampering traditionalism. It should 
also move to a reconsideration of the central claims 
of religion those who have swept out the priceless 
jewel with the dust. 

I 

The key to an understanding of historic and social 
movements is to be found in the phenomena of 
leadership. On the higher plane, even democratic 
and co-operative enterprises, whose leaders are not 
imposed from above but brought forth from within, 
understand the importance of intelligent oversight 
and direction, however much they may seek to place 
restrictions upon the personal powers of their ap- 
pointed heads. On a lower plane, the tribe, the 
clan, the band of marauders (at certain stages these 
words are synonyms) will follow the leadership of 
the one best qualified to help them attain their 
objects. 

At times the leader by his superior strength, 
wisdom or craft may be able to exact tremendous toll 



xx Introduction 

in return for his services. The opportunities for 
leadership are also opportunities for exploitation. 
In spite of his abuses of his position of advantage the 
leader may make himself felt as at least the lesser 
evil. He stands in the eyes of his followers between 
them and greater evils or dangers. His services and 
powers may even enable him to inspire a supreme 
loyalty — rising to hero-worship — and then his ad- 
herents become prepared to sacrifice to his obedience 
their dearest possessions — even life itself. In pro- 
portion as he can make himself indispensable in 
their eyes as a living condition of the attainment of 
of their highest aims or strongest desires, his op- 
portunities for exploitation are multiplied. 

The influence of a strong leader may persist and 
the power of his name may go on increasing after 
his death. The tradition of many tribes that their 
God was also their ancestor probably rests on an 
historic basis of fact. Through a process of deifica- 
tion the great leader of the past has come to be 
thought of as a living divine being or spirit still 
devoted to the cause of his people and exercising a 
divine guidance through his successors or through his 
representatives the priests and oracles of the tribal 
cult. 1 The taxes or the gifts which they paid or 
gave to their chief in his life are now offered in 
sacrifice to his spirit or paid to the guardians of his 
shrines. 

1 His return to earth as a deliverer may come to be anticipated 
in times of trouble. (Cf. King Arthur and Barbarossa legends 
and others similar.) 



Introduction xxi 

II 

In no field of human interest do men feel a greater 
need of leadership than in religion. Here their sense 
of ignorance and dependence is most complete. 

Religion offers the most important and indispen- 
sable goods, — negatively, protection from threat- 
ened dangers of loss, sickness, premature death or 
from unknown dangers after death; positively, it 
offers consolation, guidance, hope, success, present 
power and perhaps an eternal heaven of bliss. 

In religion the opportunities of leadership reach 
their climax — for good or for evil. The appeal made 
to the highest in man should lead to glorious at- 
tainments. But the appeal to ignorance, fear, 
superstition, credulity, cupidity, selfishness, — to 
the lower as well as to the better traits, — may be 
utilized by religious exploiters to their own advan- 
tage and to the everlasting detriment of those who 
are brought under their control. 

Ill 

With minor exceptions religion is organized on the 
group principle — it belongs to a tribe, a nation, a 
cult, or transcends national boundaries as a church. 
Its leaders seek and sometimes win a monopoly of its 
dispensation. Sometimes we see the struggle for 
this monopoly in process — now almost unopposed, 
again encountering fierce resistance. The opposi- 
tion may come from either of two sources, from a 
rival "secular" or political leadership which also 
wishes a monopoly of exploitation, or from a dif- 



xxii Introduction 

ferent type of religion truly devoted to the welfare of 
men and seeking to destroy the leadership of the 
exploiters and substitute a disinterested leadership, 
based upon a higher conception of the deity as the 
beneficent Guide of all mankind, a leadership aiming 
at the emancipation of the downmost common man 
and his highest social and spiritual elevation. This 
type of religion not only opposes the exploiting of 
religious leaders, but it opposes exploitation of every 
kind — whether by kings, the aristocracy, the mili- 
tary feudal caste, or the money power. 1 

The religious leader of this type is known as the 
Prophet and he early made his appearance in the 
history of Israel. He is the spokesman of God and 
of the common people to whose cause God is devoted. 
He presents a theology incomparably higher than 
the theology which the priests have manipulated 
in the interests of their own power and control. He 
denies all their claims of monopoly, of their position 
as middlemen between the Producer of all benefits 
and the dependent consumer. He declares that the 
tickets of admission sold by the priests — their 
oracles, ceremonials, implements of divination, the 
sacrifices demanded by them, are fraudulent. He 
declares that no tickets are required — that every 
man has the right of free access to the God Who loves 
him and his fellows and wishes them well. In thus 

1 Frequently priests and princes pool their interests in the 
game of exploitation. At times prophetic reformers have sought 
to co-operate with the " secular power " to limit religious ex- 
ploitation. 



Introduction xxiii 

denouncing the powerful exploiting classes the 
prophet not only spurns the fees of religion but he 
encounters the gravest personal dangers. His only 
safety lies in the success of his appeal to the con- 
sciences of the wrong-doers in high places or in win- 
ning the backing of the people. Some prophets by 
these means have worked and taught in a measure of 
security, but as a rule the world-prophets have also 
been the world-martyrs because the exploiting classes 
have hardened their consciences and preferred to 
follow their exploitations rather than obey the Voice 
of God. Their favorite method has always been 
to discredit the prophet in the eyes of the people to 
whose cause he was devoted, by accusing him of 
being a heretic and a blasphemer — and then putting 
him out of the way by the death penalty — the people 
having been cowed and detached from their leader 
through superstitious fear of the hierarchy's claims, 
or well-grounded fear of its political power. 

IV 

The conflict between the prophetic and exploiting 
types of religion early passed over from Judaism into 
the history of Christianity. It represents a per- 
manent alignment and is the religious issue the 
grasping of which is of supreme importance both 
to the intellectual apprehension of what Christian- 
ity is, and to its practical application as a program 
of human salvation, individual and social, economic 
and spiritual. 

Naturally the question of supreme importance to 



xxiv Introduction 

our study is the place of Jesus in relation to the pro- 
phetic type of religion. To the Christian as well as 
to the student of religion no questions can be more 
vital than (i) how Jesus stood in relation to the 
exploiters of religion in His Own day; (2) how He 
embodied and perfected the prophetic spirit of 
religion and expanded it to the widest reach of 
Catholicism (in its original sense of Universalism) ; 
(3) how He would by inference regard those who 
overlaid His prophetic initiation of the Kingdom 
of God by founding an exploiting ecclesiasticism 
based upon His Person as the God of a cult; (4) 
where and how the influence of Jesus is to be mani- 
fested in the present struggle between the pro- 
phetic and exploiting types of religion and in the 
extension of that struggle to the wider field of con- 
flict between the people and their leaders who seek 
their emancipation from political, economic, social, 
intellectual and spiritual restrictions, on the one 
side, and those self-imposed leaders and masters 
who strive to increase the power of those restric- 
tions that they and their class may continue to en- 
joy special privileges with their concomitant op- 
portunities for exploitation, on the other. 

V 

The object of this book, as its title suggests, is a 
study of the historic conflict between the two types 
of religion which we have designated as prophetic 
and exploiting. It further seeks to ascertain the 
theological aspects and implications of the contest — 



In t rodactio n xx v 

to do justice to the theological permanence, veracity 
and breadth of vision of prophetism and to show how 
the theologies of hierarchies and ecclesiasticisms 
were influenced or manipulated in the interests of 
the will to exploit. 

VI 

In Jesus we find the supreme development of the 
prophetic type of religion. In order to vindicate 
this claim it has been necessary to show in how far 
some of even His earliest adherents misconceived or 
misrepresented Him. We have also been compelled, 
in this interest, to introduce what may seem to 
some on first sight as a diversion — namely, a careful 
analysis of that degenerate and bizarre metamor- 
phosis of prophetism into apocalypticism — (the at- 
tempt of priestly writers to masquerade as prophets), 
and the assertion of certain modern critics that the 
Gospel of Jesus gave its adherence to this typical 
gospel of hate and despair. 

In this study both psychology and criticism must 
be employed as effectively as the capacity of the 
student of these problems will permit. 

VII 

It is a great, sometimes an unconscious, tribute 
which men in every age and of the widest variety of 
opinions have paid to the moral leadership of Christ, 
by claiming Him as the embodiment or Advocate of 
their highest ideals and fondest dreams. How 
great is the range of these claimants ! The Cross of 
the Prince of Peace, on which He prayed for the 



xxvi Introduction 

forgiveness of His enemies, was taken as the emblem 
of bloody conquest by the red-handed Constantine, 
and the term "Crusade," derived from the Cross, 
became the synonym for war, rape and rapine — the 
criminal agents being fortified with plenary indul- 
gences! Weapons of destruction have been blest 
in the Name of the Crucified. At the opposite pole 
the anchorite, monk and friar have worshipped an 
ascetic Christ in their own image, renouncing present 
joy to save their souls for pleasures eternal. Even 
the Mohammedans have a Gospel of their own (a 
pseudepigraphical "Gospel of Barnabas") which 
gives the Mohammendan interpretation of Jesus. 
In it Jesus is made to say in the presence of the High 
Priest "I am Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary, of 
the stock of David, a mortal man, and fear God and 
seek His honor and glory." He also disclaims the 
title of Messiah and foretells the coming of Moham- 
med. 1 Philosophical anarchists like Tolstoy, social 
reformers like Bouck White and Bernard Shaw, 
have found their own dreams in Jesus the Carpenter. 
More recently, the decadent George Moore 2 has 
invented a frankly fictitious Christ and in His mouth 
has placed expressions that reflect his own anti- 
Christian, futile philosophy, while H. G. Wells has 
read into Jesus' sympathy for "fallen women" a 
support for his own doctrine of sex license. 

1 (Ch. 96.) Quoted in article in Journal of Theological Studies — 
April, 1902 — p. 446, "On the Mohammedan Gospel of Barnabas" 
by W. A. E. Axon, LL.D. 

2 In "The Brook Kerith." 



Introduction xxvii 

VIII 

In the modern age the cause of prophetism has re- 
ceived great furtherance and emancipation from 
dogmatic and ecclesiastical control through the 
triumphant progress of scientific, historical and lit- 
erary criticism of the sources of the Old and New 
Testament, and the scientific study of Church his- 
tory. We are thereby enabled to observe not only 
the decorated tombs of the prophets or to think of 
them as the merely temporary and subordinate 
foretellers of coming events, but as the real co-opera- 
tors with God, who prepared the way for the coming 
of His reign on earth. Their message is thereby res- 
cued from the scrap heap and given permanent 
value. 

We are also enabled to see the inside of the less 
edifying process whereby the hierarchy of exploiters 
falsified history and perverted the teaching about 
the Nature and Will of God in the interests of their 
caste pre-eminence. 

The extension of this process of study should by 
its emancipation of the prophetic spirit culminate in 
the present and future in the birth of a new race of 
prophetic leaders and the realization of the triumph 
of their cause, the cause of the People, the cause of 
Jesus, named by Him the Cause of the Kingdom of 
God. 



RELIGION— ITS PROPHETS AND 
FALSE PROPHETS 



Religion: Its Prophets and False 
Prophets 

CHAPTER I 

RISE OF THE JEWISH PRIESTHOOD 

There is a well grounded opinion that if we 
could know the stories of the rise of all the historic 
priesthoods we should find in them a marked simi- 
larity of movement. We are on fairly safe ground 
in taking the case of the Jewish priesthood as typi- 
cal. It certainly shows analogies to what we know 
of the rise of the Christian priesthood. 

Court "historians" in the Imperial East have 
written their epics to show that Emperors are lin- 
eal descendants of the gods (and in the West we 
have the ^Eneid of Virgil). 

The official "Chroniclers" of priestly castes have 
written with a similar intention — to show the direct 
Divine origin of the priesthoods. In thus provid- 
ing the parvenus with the desired lineage some his- 
torical facts were used in making a mosaic chart of 
the family tree. 

In the Pentateuch (or Hexateuch) we have such 
a mosaic, and the Biblical antiquarian desiring to 
recover a true picture of the past has in his quest 
incidentally uncovered the literary devices em- 
ployed by the priests to advance their own power 
and prestige. 



2 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

By the help of the historical and literary critics 
we are enabled to get first a picture of the primitive 
democratic and decentralized religion — and then 
to see the movement of the priestly exploiters as 
it arose and developed into a centralized aristocratic 
theocracy. 

I 

When the ancestors of the Israelites were living in 
the nomadic stage — that is, in the "Age of the Pa- 
triarchs" — there was no established or centralized 
priesthood. 

"Among the nomadic Semites, to whom the He- 
brews belonged before they settled in Canaan, there 
has never been any settled priesthood. The acts 
of religion partake of the general simplicity of desert 
life. Apart from the private worship of household 
gods and the oblations and salutations offered at 
the graves of departed kinsmen, the ritual observ- 
ances of the ancient Arabs were visits to the tribal 
sanctuary to salute the god with a gift of milk, first- 
fruits, or the like, the sacrifice of firstlings and vows, 
and an occasional pilgrimage to discharge a vow at 
the annual feast and fair of one of the more distant 

holy places. These acts required no priestly aid. 

"i 

• • • 

The stories of the Patriarchs in the earliest writ- 
ings of the Hexateuch exhibit similar conditions. 
There were no Hebrew priests. From the Code 

1 Article by Prof. W. R. Smith and Prof. A. Bertholet in 
Encyclopaedia Biblica, Vol. Ill, Col. 3839. 



Rise of the Jewish Priesthood 3 

of the Covenant compiled in the 8th Century B.C. 
(the earliest written document of the Hebrew cus- 
tomary law — Ex. 20:20, 23:23), we find that the 
primitive nomadic ordinances continued in force for 
a long time after the settlement in Palestine. There 
is as yet no mention of a priestly caste. The head 
of the family naturally acted as the officiant, but 
any male member of the family might offer sacri- 
fice when absent on a journey. The form of altar 
prescribed was such that it might be erected any- 
where in a short time. It was to be made of un- 
hewn stones or of earth. The offerings consisted 
of the first fruits of the fields, and first-born of 
the herds. It is nowhere implied that this early 
offering was regarded as an atonement for sins. 1 
'The sacrifices and offerings were acknowledg- 
ments of the divine bounty and means used to in- 
sure its continuance . . . " 2 
"Each man slew his own victim and divided the 
sacrifice in his own circle; the share of the god was 
the blood which was smeared upon or poured out 
beside a stone set up as an altar. ... It does 
not appear that any portion of the sacrifice was 
burned on the altar, or that any part of the vic- 
tim was the due of the sanctuary. " 3 

1 The commandment to offer the firstborn son as a sacrifice 
(Ex. 22:29) does not belong in this document. It was a later 
provision borrowed from the Assyrian cultus, and denounced 
by the prophets — (Micah 6:7). 

"Article "Priest" in Encyl. Biblica, cited above. 

•Ibid. 



4 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

The description of the Arab sacrificial customs 
seems to fit the conditions among the Israelites in 
their nomadic or early agricultural condition. 

The Hebrews identified the blood with the life. 
This was, therefore, returned to the Life-giver as 
His portion. It was a sacrilege to eat the blood. 
This seems to indicate a reverence for the mystery 
of life — in itself an instinctive religious motive. 
It is probable that whenever an animal was killed 
for food this ceremony was a form of ' ' grace before 
meat." 

II 

The primitive Semitic religion was a lay religion. 1 
The patriarchs were men of prayer. Such of 
their prayers as are contained in Genesis breathe 
a beautiful spirit of intimacy with Jehovah and a 
consciousness of His everpresent accessibility and 
guidance in regard to the practical affairs of life. 
A beautiful illustration is found in the story of 
Abraham's servant's quest for the right wife for 
Isaac 2 (a matter of vast importance in the eyes of 
later generations whose ancestress was about to be 
selected). 

In this assumption of God's nearness and acces- 
sibility we find the roots of the democratic strain 
in the later Hebrew religion. Both the God-con- 

x \t is interesting to recall that in Mohammedanism, though 
it became an exploiting religion, there is no provision for a sacer- 
dotal caste. The original Arab democracy is safeguarded and 
perpetuated. 

2 Gen. 24. 



Rise of the Jewish Priesthood 5 

sciousness of the prophets and the devotional ap- 
peal of the Psalm-writers find their warrant here. 
Men who pray to the same God find in their com- 
mon worship the strongest tie of solidarity. The 
group consciousness is strengthened and elevated 
at the same time. 

Common prayer and worship beget the highest 
type of loyalty, become a source of strength and 
comfort, and tend to uplift the human spirit, even 
though the theological ideas of the worshippers 
may be crude and imperfect. The discovery of 
the law of self-suggestion by modern psychology 
shows how religious beliefs and practices, even 
when illfounded in objective facts, may automati- 
cally produce highly beneficial results. Of course 
the limitation of this primitive religion lay in the 
tribal conception. It produced or strengthened 
at best a sense of tribal solidarity and was divisive 
in relation to the solidarity of the human race. 
The latter doctrine had to wait till the belief in 
the tribal God had been superseded by the pro- 
phetical belief in the One God, the Creator and 
Source of all mankind. 

Ill 

As the prophetic religion had its historic roots 
in the patriarchical God-consciousness, so the ex- 
ploiting religion grew up about the local sacred 
places scattered through the desert oases and the 
hill country. The early priestly families, repre- 
sented by Melchisedec, Jethro, perhaps Balaam, 



6 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

and others, were guardians of the sacred places 
connected with early theophanies in which God 
had manifested Himself with particular vividness. 
Where God had once been so clearly shown, His 
Presence might again be sought with the best ex- 
pectations. Moreover, the visitor at the shrine 
did not have to depend upon a private revelation 
which might be delayed or wholly withheld. 

The guardians of the shrine had in their keeping 
certain sacred instruments of divination by means 
of which they professed to be able surely to ascertain 
from God the information desired. They claimed 
to be able to find the Divine Will and purpose regis- 
tered in the flight of birds or the entrails of sacri- 
ficial animals. If the right omens were not found 
in the first sacrificial animal there was hope that 
they might occur in later victims after the number 
of the sacrifices had been able to effect a desired 
change of attitude on the part of the god. (Wit- 
ness the unavailing persistence of Balak in his deal- 
ings with the priest Balaam. When a number of 
animals were thus sacrificed it would naturally fol- 
low that the priestly larder would be well stocked.) 
Moreover, the ability to manipulate the sacred lot 
opened an opportunity for influence on the part of 
the diviner which readily lent itself to exploitation. 

Not only the rewards of the priests but also their 
influence was greatly enhanced as they came to be 
consulted in matters of growing importance. It 
seems a small matter that Rebekah should " in- 
quire of God" (the technical expression for con- 



Rise of the Jewish Priesthood 7 

suiting the oracle) about the meaning of the alarm- 
ing symptoms of her pregnancy. But the smaller 
occasion might lead to the greater. Saul who goes 
to inquire about his father's strayed asses through 
Samuel finds, through the medium of the oracle, 
the kingship of the Israelites. He also finds the 
asses. 

The sanctuary had long had its chief significance 
as the seat of judgment. The Hebrew law was a 
judge-made law. In quarrels, disputes, and dis- 
sensions, the parties laid their case before the priest 
whose decisions were theoretically the decisions of 
Jehovah Himself. Thus the law was regarded as 
a Divine law. 1 This was given especial prominence 
when Moses sat to judge the people. Later all 
the decisions, precedents, and even new decisions 
and innovations, came to be regarded as proceed- 
ing from him. The Mosaic tradition was claimed 
by the later highly developed priestly colleges and 
nothing was deemed authoritative unless it could 
claim the sanction of his name. After the mon- 
archy the priests still retained their judicial powers 
and functions and this gave them their political 
influence. The claim to act as fountains of Divine 
judgment gave the priests an opportunity to sway 
affairs of state and that they sometimes used fraud 
even our records admit. Saul and David and later 
kings took no important steps without consulting 
the oracle. The sense of dependence even on the 

x The word "Torah" — later applied to the whole Jewish law — 
is derived from a Hebrew word meaning to "cast a (sacred) lot. " 



8 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

part of kings is shown in the case of Saul — who, 
when he could get no response through the dis- 
affected priests " neither by dreams, nor by Urim, 
nor by the soothsayers" (I Samuel 28 f), resorted 
in desperation to the " Witch of Endor. " 

As to the use of fraud we are frankly told that 
Elisha, the man of God, sent a lying oracle to Ben- 
hadad king of Syria (II Kings 8: 8) — a thing held 
to be legitimate in dealing with an enemy. More- 
over it is not only the soothsayer who is credited 
with the use of justifiable fraud — but even Jehovah 
Himself. This idea is not only found in that early 
account of Jehovah's making use of a lying spirit in 
order to mislead four hundred soothsayers that they 
might entice Ahab to his death 1 — but so high and 
late an authority as Ezekiel tells us that Jehovah 
Himself sometimes falsified the oracle. 2 

If the priests (Ezekiel was of their number) could 
believe deception legitimate on the part of God — 
how should lying not also be justified as means to 
desired ends, on the part of God's representatives 
— i.e. themselves? Nothing could more conclu- 
sively discredit the priestly veracity than their 
conception of a God Who now and then resorted to 
lies. This is but a plain instance of men creating 
God in their own image. Moreover, it justified 
them, in their own eyes, in their falsification of the- 
ology and of history. 

l \ Kings 22 — and II Chronicles 18. 

2 "If the prophet be deceived, I, Jehovah, have deceived that 
prophet." (Ezek. 14: jn».) 



19- 



Rise of the Jewish Priesthood 9 

IV 

Before turning to the rise of the literary prophets 
in the Eighth Century B.C., let us rapidly sketch 
the emergence of the priestly caste after the settle- 
ment in Palestine and its growth as an exploiting 
power in the days of Amos who denounces it in un- 
mistakable terms as an exploiting and corrupt hier- 
archy utterly faithless to God and to the Cause of 
His people. 

A primitive account of the rise of an early line 
of priests is found in the story of Micah's " private 
chaplain" in Judges 17 and 18: Micah is a man of 
wealth and, as he can afford it, he is anxious to have 
a priest of his own to consult the oracle for him and 
so bring him knowledge whereby his prosperity 
may be still further increased. He has an image 
or images made of silver (with no consciousness 
that this would displease Jehovah Whose favor he 
is seeking) . He himself makes the ephod and tera- 
phim — the instruments of divination. For the lack 
of a better he, though a layman, sets his own son 
apart as his priest. He thinks a visiting Levite from 
Bethlehem would make a better priest and so he 
deposes his son and consecrates the Levite in his 
place. He is immensely pleased with the new min- 
ister. But the latter for his part is serving his own 
interests. He is discovered by some Danites who 
are looking for a favorable place to found a settle- 
ment. They consult the oracle through him and 
get a favorable response. 



io Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

Later they return with their fellow tribesmen, 
rob Micah of his whole ecclesiastical outfit, priest, 
images, ephod and teraphim. Thereby they se- 
cure the favor of Jehovah for themselves. The 
young priest is not outraged by the treatment of 
his former patron (whom for some reason he had not 
forewarned) but "his heart was glad" l at this "call 
to a larger field of usefulness." 

A later gloss written after the captivity tells us 
that this priest was the founder of the Danite priest- 
hood, that he was "Jonathan, the son of Gershom, 
the son of Moses," and that his descendants con- 
tinued to be priests to the Danites till the captivity. 2 

The striking thing about this story is that the 
fact of exploitation is at once so conspicuous and 
so uncondemned. What a moral chasm between 
Moses and his alleged grandson! And what a 
founder to claim for a legitimate line of priests! 
If the head be corrupt what of the members! 3 

At a later date and on a larger scale we find the 
same element of exploitation in the story of the 
priests of Shiloh. But in this case there is an 
implied condemnation on the part of the author who 
exhibits the feeling of the people as outraged by the 
conduct of the wicked sons Hophni and Phineas 
of the "good" but weak priest Eli. At this stage 
of development the laity still have the right to offer 
their own sacrifices at the shrine of which the priests 

1 Judges 18: 30. 

2 Judges 18: 30. 

3 The brief genealogy is probably fictitious. 



Rise of the Jewish Priesthood II 

are the guardians. We are plainly told that the 
layman Elkanah, future father of Samuel, thus 
sacrificed in his turn. The bad priests offended 
by insolently helping themselves to whatever they 
liked of the sacrificial victims as well as by seducing 
whom they could of the female worshippers. 

In reading this narrative we have to allow for 
the fact that it is being retold by a later writer de- 
voted to the claim of the Jerusalem priesthood to 
have the only legitimate right to the succession. 
The prophecy of the "man of God " that the priestly 
house of Eli (nothing is said of Samuel) was to be 
degraded and punished, and a "faithful priest" 
to be raised up in its stead, is by critics held to have 
been introduced as a warrant for the later suppres- 
sion of that particular line by Solomon. It is sus- 
pected that this later editor blackened the charac- 
ter of these priests and made them appear worse 
than others — in order to justify their later suppres- 
sion. However, after Shiloh was destroyed by the 
Philistines some of the descendants of Eli appear 
as priests at the shrine of Nob (I Samuel 21:2). 
They are represented as supporters of the claims 
of David as against Saul who on that account sought 
to have the whole priestly clan massacred and all 
but succeeded, for Abiathar alone escaped — the 
sole survivor. He remained faithful to David and 
on the latter's accession to the throne became High 
Priest. Other men were now elevated to the priest- 
hood — among them Zadok the founder of the most 
powerful and enduring line of priests. He sue- 



12 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

ceeded to the High Priesthood on the death of David. 
While the succession to the throne was still unsettled 
Abiathar advocated the claims of David's son Ado- 
nijah — whereas Zadok, with better fortune, stood by 
Solomon. On the latter's accession Abiathar was 
banished. Thus the line of Eli was superseded by 
the "faithful priest" referred to in the interpolated 
prophecy about the house of Shiloh. 

Zadok (to whom the Sadducees traced their ori- 
gin and from whom they took their name) seems 
to have been complacent in regard to the royal be- 
havior. He presided over a wonderful temple and 
did not worry about the monarch's wives or the 
houses built by the king for the worship of their 
gods. His descendants carried exploitation to its 
greatest efficiency and later writers of their group 
provided their ancestor with a genealogy reaching 
back to Aaron, brother of Moses. 



The Rise of Prophetism 13 



CHAPTER II 

THE RISE OF PROPHETISM 

The progress of priestly exploitation did not go 
on unresisted. Before we continue the story to its 
climax we will take account of the opposition which 
was soon in full swing. 

The prophetic religion was a distinct type from 
the priestly. It was not merely a movement of op- 
position, or protest, though it developed positively 
and constructively through its conflict with its 
opposite. Beginning as the religion of one people it 
continually expanded until it became a free, uni- 
versal religion. It finds its epitome and final de- 
velopment in the teaching of Jesus. The priestly 
religion, on the other hand, tended to become more 
and more exclusive, monopolistic and oppressive. 

There are three aspects of prophetism which we 
have to consider in this chapter: (1) its hereditary 
origin as an independent religious type ; (2) its con- 
flict with its opposite; and (3) the resulting type 
of prophetic consciousness. The chapter following 
this will be devoted to the permanent contribution 
of prophetism to theology and ethics. 

I 

We have already noted that the germs of pro- 
phetic religion are found in the patriarchial. The 
patriarchs were men of prayer, consciously com- 



14 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

miming with Jehovah, receiving direct guidance in 
answer to prayer. This guidance concerned the wel- 
fare of the tribal family of which the patriarch was 
the head. Guidance is a prophetic note. Jehovah 
is the God of the people, and the internal social de- 
velopment of the people is His concern. "The re- 
ligion of the prophet is to be considered as an inner 
evolution of the Israelite religion itself." l 

This concern of Jehovah for the internal well- 
being of the tribe, is, in principle, social and demo- 
cratic. Though the patriarch governs, his rule is 
for the benefit of the governed. He is a father, not 
an exploiter of his people. The patriarch is a lay- 
man — but a God-conscious layman. The prophet 
is also a God-conscious layman, but without the 
patriarchial authority to govern. He endeavors, 
however, to make the guidance and authority of 
Jehovah the standard of the people's conduct. The 
original type of the prophet was called the "seer." 2 

He had this in common with the primitive priest, 
that both delivered oracles when the people came 
to consult Jehovah through them. But whereas the 
priest used the sacred lot, the seer, as the name 
implies, was regarded as having direct insight or 
clairvoyance into the mind of Jehovah. 

If the earlier seers ever used the sacred lot (which 
may be regarded as a sort of ancient equivalent of 

x Carl Marti; The Religion of the Old Testament, Its Place 
Among the Religions of the Nearer East, G. P. Putnam Sons, 
1914, p. 124. 

2 1 Sam. 9:9. 



The Rise of Prophctism 15 

the modern Ouija board) the later prophets dis- 
carded all such instruments of divination and con- 
sulted Jehovah in prayer. 

The prophets Samuel, Elijah and Elisha are rep- 
resented as exerting direct influence upon political 
affairs. The latter two seemed to have been like 
great magicians, knowing the future and knowing 
how to influence the forces of nature. The Deuter- 
onomist seems to feel that it is the strict province of 
the prophet simply to predict. If his predictions 
come true he is a genuine prophet. If they fail he 
is a false, presumptuous prophet, and is to be put 
to death. 1 

A prophet who confined his activities to the en- 
deavor to foretell future events might serve the 
purposes of the priestly caste. But prediction was 
a matter of relatively small moment with the liter- 
ary prophets. They concerned themselves with the 
present, as religious and moral teachers; they com- 
bated evils and so were dangerous. It was easy to 
charge them with being false prophets, if even the 
form of trial were given them, and to convict them 
by a "packed" priestly jury and sentence them to 
death by a priestly tribunal. 

The term " prophet" is applied in the Old Testa- 
ment to two distinct types of men, and these need 
to be distinguished. There were those who repre- 
sented the free, democratic clan brotherhood and 
the nomadic tradition of Israel. They had their 
homes in the hills where the simpler forms of social 

^eut. 18: 20, 22. 



1 6 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

life persisted. The dwellers in the plains were being 
corrupted by the Amorite civilization of the earlier 
dwellers in Palestine. The form of government had 
become monarchical ; the power of wealth had been 
organized into an exploiting aristocracy and a 
priestly caste was joining hands with the strong to 
keep the people in subjection. 

The true prophets opposed all these innovations 
as contraventions of the law (mishpat) of Jehovah. 
Louis Wallis, in his book "The Sociological Study 
of the Bible" (University of Chicago Press) has dis- 
tinguished these prophets as the "insurgents." 
There is another class of prophets who are adher- 
ents of the newer order. These Wallis calls the 
"regular" prophets. They supported the mon- 
archy, exploiting aristocracy, and worked hand in 
hand with the exploiting priests. Whenever we use 
the word prophet without a qualifying adjective we 
mean the real or "insurgent" prophet, true to his 
Israelite origin. The other class, upholding the 
Amorite innovations and vested caste rights, will be 
designated as "false" prophets. They are con- 
demned by the true prophets in the same terms as 
the priest. Such adjectives as "lying" (Isa. 9:5, 
Jer. 6:3), and "covetous" (Jer. 8: 10), "drunken" 
(Isa. 28: 7), and "profane" (Jer. 23: 11) are applied 
to them. Micah declares that these prophets di- 
vine for money (Micah 3: n). (This implies that 
the true prophets did not accept payment for their 
messages.) Zephaniah speaks of "light and treach- 
erous" prophets (Zeph. 3:4). Ezekiel likens cer- 



The Rise of Prophetism 1 7 

tain prophets to foxes (Ezek. 13: 14). The most 
serious charges against the false prophets are con- 
tained in the words of Jeremiah: " I have seen also 
in the prophets of Jerusalem a horrible thing: they 
commit adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen 
also the hands of evil-doers that none doth return from 
his wickedness . . . (Jer. 23:14). There was 

a special reason for the bitterness of Jeremiah 
against the false prophets as we shall see later. 

The true prophets stood by the older customary 
law or mishpat which protected the poor and weak 
against the aggressions of the wealthy and powerful. 
The intruding Amorite mishpat was made, or at 
least manipulated, in the interests of the exploiting 
classes. The ancient mishpat was to the prophet 
the true law of Jehovah. It was founded upon 
"justice and mercy." 

II 

We have now to describe the actual struggle be- 
tween the prophets and their antagonists. In this 
the prophets relied wholly upon the word of Jehovah 
and the appeal of His word to the consciences of the 
ruling classes. The priests, on the other hand, relied 
upon their claim to external authority supported by 
intrigue and physical force. When the prophets 
got too obnoxious to the king, the nobles, and priests, 
they were slain. 1 

The prophets did not rest content with general 
charges against the priests that they were substi- 

1 Jer. 2: 30, Neh. 9: 26. 



1 8 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

tuting a new mishpat for the old covenant of Jeho- 
vah. There are very specific charges in the indict- 
ment and there is little doubt that they were well 
founded. 

(i) The prophets are bitter in their denunciation 
of the elaborate sacrificial ceremonial. Jeremiah 
explicitly states that Jehovah gave no command- 
ment to the fathers of Israel in regard to sac- 
rifice. The elaborate priestly ceremonial is thus an 
innovation. What Jehovah did command was sim- 
ple obedience to the guidance of His living Voice. 1 
Hosea interprets Jehovah as saying: "I desire 
mercy and not sacrifice." 2 

Micah declares that Jehovah desires nothing in 
the way of sacrifice but instead justice, mercy and 
humility. Amos and Isaiah give full descriptions 
of the elaborated cultus, every detail of which is 
described as nauseating to Jehovah. 3 

(2) The kings and the ruling classes are grouped 
together in many prophetic denunciations. They 
are recognized as members of the same conspiracy 
of exploitation. The prophets were anti-monarchi- 
cal and in favor of maintaining the democratic clan 
brotherhood. Especially bitter were Amos and 
Jeremiah in dealing with the sins of particular kings 
whom the priests called "the Lord's annointed." 
The priests are blamed for the support given by 
them to evil kings and nobles. 

1 Jer. 7:22, 23. 

2 Hosea 6: 6. 

3 Amos 5: 21 ff, Isa. 1: II, ff. 



The Rise of Prophetism 19 

(3) Hosea emphasizes the charge of ignorance of 
Jehovah on the part of the priests. Not knowing 
Jehovah they are practically godless. If they had 
known Him they could not have been guilty of the 
crimes they commit — perjury, murder, theft, adul- 
tery, housebreaking, and violence. 1 

(4) The prophets also accused the priests of cap- 
italizing the sins of the people so as to make revenue 
for themselves through " indulgences.' ' As Hosea 
puts it: "They get a living from the sins of my 
people and their desire is toward the people's 
guilt." 2 

(5) The same prophet is most explicit in charging 
that the priests have introduced licentious rites, 
borrowed from heathen peoples. The daughters of 
the Israelites were thus led to "commit whoredom, 
and their wives to commit adultery." 3 

(6) One of the most serious and far-reaching 
charges made by the prophets against the priests 
is that they perverted justice at its fountain head 
in accepting bribes in rendering corrupt judicial 
decisions. That is the meaning underlying the 
scornful allusion to "gifts" in Isaiah 1: 23, and to 
"rewards" in Micah 3: 11, 7: 3, Isa. 5: 23, and 
elsewhere. In modern phrase the priests accepted 
"petty graft." 

Not only was nearly every thinkable crime 
charged against the priests but the prophets hold 

1 Hosea 4: 1, 2. 

2 Hosea 4: 8. 

3 Hosea 4: 12, 13. 



20 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

them responsible for the ignorance and low moral 
state of the people who looked to them for leader- 
ship. So great do they regard the evil of the 
priestly influence that they are sure that Jehovah 
is determined upon the complete removal of the 
priesthood. "But with you, O ye priests, will I go 
to judgment. . . . My people is destroyed be- 
cause it has no knowledge; therefore, will I spurn 
you that ye may be my priests no more. And since 
ye have cast the mishpat of your God out of your 
minds I will also cast your children out of my mind." 1 
This is a prophecy of the complete doom of the 
priestly line. 

What the priests are accused of neglecting, the 
prophets undertook themselves to do; to denounce 
heathen customs, to bring the people out of their 
ignorance of Jehovah, to show His wrath against 
immoral practices, to rebuke evil kings and exploit- 
ing aristocrats, to teach the true mishpat, justice, 
mercy and truth ; to show Jehovah's disgust at the 
ceremonial, to enkindle the consciences of sinners 
by warning of the impending discipline of Jehovah 
in which He will employ the agency of conquering 
nations. They went on to show that the cultus 
was no protection, as the priests claimed it was, 
against the threatened invasion of world powers 
that would lead the sinful people into captivity. 
Jehovah would use these very enemies against whom 
the priests were promising protection, to punish the 
misguided people for their neglect of the true mish- 

1 Hosea 4: 4-7. 



The Rise of Prophetism 21 

pat. The king, aristocrats, and their priestly sup- 
porters, the prophets declared, would be the first to 
suffer. Only the righteous, or at least the penitent, 
would escape the threatened disaster, and from these 
survivors, who would have learned through disci- 
pline truly to know Jehovah, He would build up a 
truly righteous nation to fulfil His Will. 

Before calamities fell the prophets warned of 
them and sought to avert them by moving the 
people to repentance. After they had befallen the 
prophets sought to drive home the lessons and then 
gave themselves to the mission of consolation and 
to proposing a program for the reestablishment of 
the nation on a lasting foundation of righteousness. 
In this epoch they became the interpreters of the 
lessons of world history in which they read the un- 
folding Will of Jehovah, and their appreciation of 
the interpretation of history enabled them to make 
one of their most important permanent contribu- 
tions to theological truth. 

On the practical side the prophetic principle that 
corruption destroys any vestige of claim to moral 
and religious leadership is of fundamental impor- 
tance to all reforming movements. It is the safe- 
guard of religious liberty. It sets aside the priestly 
contention that God's gift of authority to teach 
and rule is inalienable — a non-forfeitable vested 
right. The subsequent claim of the Catholic Church 
that the unworthiness of the priest does not affect 
the " validity" of the sacrament is based upon this 
contention that corruption does not even break the 



22 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

monopolistic control of the channels of access to 
Divine favor. The object is to force the righteous 
layman to come even to the evil priest in order to 
have any transaction with the Deity. 

The prophet claims that no one, no matter what 
his priestly claims, can represent God to another, 
apart from a penitent life striving to know, to do, 
and to reveal God's Will. The priestly hall-mark 
is in itself an infringement, a usurpation. The con- 
ditions of attaining religious leadership are open to 
all. 

The priestly and prophetic claims appear mutu- 
ally irreconcilable. The prophets demand the elim- 
ination of the whole ecclesiastical machine. The 
priests retort with charges of blasphemy or heresy 
and demand that the prophets be stoned. Jeremiah 
2 : 30 and Nehemiah 9 : 26 bear witness to the fre- 
quency of the prophetic martyrdoms and Jesus 
points out that it is in Jerusalem (where the priests 
have the control) that the prophets must expect 
nothing but death. 

The prophet's honor is paid him, not in his life- 
time, but by building monuments over his ashes 
and putting flowers upon his grave. 

Ill 

We now turn from the external conflicts of the 
prophets to seek the inspirational sources within the 
prophetic souls and then to contrast the prophetic 
with the priestly psychology. 

The starting point of the prophet's career is 



The Rise of Prophetism 23 

mystic experience. God seeks the prophet and the 
prophet is thereby led to seek God. The God- 
seeker becomes the God-knower. As prophetic ex- 
perience accumulates and widens and the God- 
knowledge deepens, the fact that God is One is 
clearly revealed. The prophet further learns that 
God, with whom he communes in prayer, is also 
teaching mankind through the movements of world 
history. God speaking within the soul and God 
working in human relations thus offers two distinct 
channels of enlightenment. The internal-individual 
and external-social experiences are mutually inter- 
pretive. From his consciousness that God is One 
the prophet advances to the knowledge that all 
mankind is but one family. God has no ultimate 
favorities. If He bestows favors upon one nation 
it is in order that the favored ones may communi- 
cate their privileges to all the rest. 

Thus God has a plan for the whole world, and He 
calls upon men to the work of getting that plan 
accomplished. The prophet discovers that it is his 
own function to interpret this plan to his fellows and 
win their co-operation in its furtherance. In this 
he does not seek to make God useful to himself, as 
is the custom of priestly religion, but seeks to be- 
come useful to God. In place of the primitive sense 
of sin — which is associated with ceremonial unclean- 
ness rather than with moral lapses — the prophetic 
consciousness of sin becomes rather a sense of failure 
in living up to the responsibility of co-operating with 
God in righting the wrongs of the world. In the 



24 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

prophetic consciousness we find that the conception 
of sin is no longer merely personal, but through the 
new-born sense of responsibility, it has also become 
social. Isaiah combines these two aspects of sin 
when he says: "Woe is me, for I am undone, for I 
am a man of sinful life and dwell in the midst of a 
people of unclean lips." 1 The consciousness of the 
personal guilt of sins of omission comes out in the 
narrative of the prophetic call. It is the prophet's 
share of the burden of social guilt. He blames 
himself for the sins of the people. He takes upon 
himself voluntarily the burden of their removal. 
This is not to be accomplished by the easy method 
of shedding of blood of sacrificial victims, or burnt 
offerings. God does not ask to be compensated for 
the injury which men have done Him. Instead He 
desires to forget the past freely and make a new 
beginning. He desires the free services of men 
united in the effort to prevent sin and evil. He 
needs messengers and initiators of His program of 
repentance and a new life. 

The Word of God, the Spirit of God, the Vision of 
God comes to men as men. The prophets are lay- 
men who are instructed directly of God and they 
make their appeal to men as beings who are respon- 
sible to God. They look forward to the day when 
all men will receive the appeal of God directly from 
the divine Spirit. 2 

The attitude of the prophet toward his fellows 

1 Isa. 6: 5. 

2 Cf. Jer. 31 : 33, Joel 2: 28 f. See also, Numbers 11 : 29. 



The Rise of Prophetism 25 

becomes thus identically God's attitude toward 
them. His personal interests become identified 
with God's interests. The solidarity between his 
own interests and those of God, between God's in- 
terests and those of every member of the human 
race makes the thought of exploitation in the name 
of religion a moral impossibility. For the prophet 
to use his knowledge of God for private ends be- 
comes logically impossible. His knowledge of God 
itself teaches him that God utterly condemns all 
forms of exploitation. Exploitation can rest only 
upon a false conception of God or complete igno- 
rance of Him. On the contrary, the prophet's knowl- 
edge of God entails a life of fearless sacrifice in His 
cause. Thus the prophets become the world's mar- 
tyrs. The readiness to die for their cause is a con- 
spicuous element in the prophetic psychology. 

Priesthood develops externally in elaborated cere- 
monial, sacred vestments, a self-perpetuating hier- 
archy. Prophetism develops internally in a deeper 
knowledge of God and a growing sense of individual 
responsibility to Him. Priesthood seeks to control 
the avenues of approach to God through rites and 
practices which none but priests have the knowledge 
or skill or right to perform. It thus seeks to make 
itself essential to intercourse with God. Prophet- 
ism seeks to know God through the internal, per- 
sonal or mystical approach and to impart the secret 
of that approach to all men. Priesthood seeks to 
make itself indispensable and permanent. Prophet- 
ism seeks to be inclusive and to make of every last 



26 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

man a mystical God-knower. The priest seeks to 
interpose himself as a permanent, autocratic media- 
tor between God and the soul. The prophet seeks 
to mediate temporarily by way of interpretation in 
order that his mediation may be rendered perma- 
nently superfluous. 

The prophet is a striking combination of con- 
scious weakness and a sense of power. Having 
identified himself with God's cause he is destined to 
share in God's triumphs no matter what individual 
or personal fate may overtake him in this life. He 
may fail in time but he has succeeded eternally. 
He belongs in the eternal order even in the midst of 
time. It is this consciousness which enables him 
to understand how history must ultimately unfold. 
His insight into the future is not concerned with 
individual happenings which he may predict, but 
with the larger questions of human destiny. ' ' The 
prophet is but the mystic in control of the forces 
of history, declaring their necessary outcome; the 
mystic in action is the prophet. ' ' 1 u Prophetic power 
is the final evidence to each individual that he is 
right and real. It is his assurance of salvation; it 
is his share of divinity; it is his anticipation of all 
attainment." 2 

The prophet finds out what he is for. God 
formed Jeremiah in the womb to become His 
prophet. The prophet is conscious at first of his 

locking, "The Meaning of God in Human Experience," p. 

5". 

2 Ibid. p. 512. 



The Rise of Prophetism 27 

own spiritual infancy, the insufficiency of his per- 
sonal power to respond to the momentous call. 
But the call itself elicits from a latent divine gift — 
the growing strength necessary to respond to it. 
As this develops it culminates in the consciousness 
of "power from on High." Jehovah says: "Be- 
hold, I have put my words in thy mouth: see, I 
have this day set thee over the nations and over 
the kingdoms to pluck up and break down and to 
destroy and to overthrow and to build and to plant." 1 

The prophet believes, as did the ancient patri- 
arch, that the immediate guidance of God is a per- 
manent factor in individual and social life. Here 
he again breaks with the priest, who teaches that 
the law, as a permanent external whole, was once 
delivered to the ancestors of the race. This law 
may not be changed, however much it may be 
elaborated and its application extended. 

The prophet believes that instead of a law — im- 
personal and unchanging — communicated as a com- 
plete whole by God in the past, God progressively, 
through the inspired insight of religious leaders, 
teaches right principles of conduct and courses of 
action. 

The priestly conception of the "Torah" develops 
into legalism a form of law-worship or idolatry. 
The law is regarded as existing as an end in itself. 
Man is regarded as existing for the law, whereas the 
prophet regards the law as existing for the benefit 
of man. 

ijer. 1: 10. 



28 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

Against legalism the prophet urges a living spirit- 
ual and moral guidance. Those who are suffi- 
ciently in earnest may discover the law of God 
written in their own inward parts. 1 To the spiritu- 
ally awakened ear the command comes "Hearken 
to my voice." 2 This living voice proclaims moral 
responsibility reaching far beyond the precepts of 
the written law. It teaches principles instead of 
enacting legislation — such living principles as love 
to God and love to fellow man. It is not forcing 
the meaning of Jeremiah to say that the Voice of 
God to which he urges allegiance is none other than 
the voice of the divinely enlightened conscience. 

Having seen the connection of prophetism with 
the ancient Israelitish religion, having seen it in 
action against its opposite — developed out of the 
Amorite soil, and having studied the main elements 
of its psychology, we now turn to its permanent 
theological and ethical contributions. 

x Jer. 31: 33- 
2 Jer. 11: 4. 



Prophetic Theology and Ethic 29 



CHAPTER III 

PROPHETIC THEOLOGY AND ETHIC 

The source of the prophetic insight is no less than 
God Himself. As we have already seen the chan- 
nels through which that insight comes are two — the 
direct, through mystical personal experience, and 
the indirect — through history or the collective ex- 
perience of the race. 

God is the Source from Which all men and all 
things have arisen. God is the destiny to which all 
men and all things are to return on a higher plane. 
Meanwhile men have to fight their way along the 
arduous and perilous spiral of existence and need 
guidance and help in so doing. There are five great 
ideas, together embodying a complete synthesis of 
religious and ethical factors, which the prophetic 
movement as a whole has contributed to the under- 
standing of the problem of existence. 

(i) The prophets discovered the value of the in- 
dividual through mystical experience. This dis- 
covery is at once theological and ethical, (ii) The 
prophets discerned God at the center of the historic 
movement. Thereby history finds a theological and 
ethical meaning, and the mystery of suffering is 
explained, (iii) The prophets grasp the truth of 
religious universalism — the ultimate principle of the 
final world religion, and find the principle of the 
universal ethic in the doctrine of service, (iv) 



30 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

This universalism unites the theological doctrine of 
monotheism with the ethical doctrine of the solidar- 
ity of mankind. The unity of God does not make 
Him the philosophical Absolute but reveals Him as 
the Supreme Person. He does not absorb His uni- 
verse nor does the race absorb the individual. 
Room is thus left for " pluralism, " which recognizes 
the eternal value of separate individualities and so 
gives the basis for the doctrine of immortality, (v) 
The religio-ethical is found in the prophet's vision 
of the social destiny of mankind (named in modern 
times the "Messianic idea") which signifies the 
triumph of God's Leadership in history. The pro- 
phetic interpretation of this "Messianic" ideal 
differs from both the monarchical and priestly. 

The prophetic quest for truth, for reality, for 
God, does not employ the mechanism of formal logic. 
It seeks to attain its object by means of "vision," 
or the direct inner beholding of reality. In the 
modern phrase its method is that of intuition or 
immediate insight. Instead of using the syllogism 
which creeps in the direction of truth by a zig-zag 
process its method is to employ the direct approach 
to truth. The resultant experience enables the 
prophet to declare "The word of the Lord came 
unto me, saying." This sounds very ancient and 
naive, but it is given a modern standing among 
sophisticated philosophies by the work of Bergson 
and James. It is more than an accident that the 
modern philosopher of intuition should be a de- 
scendant of the ancient Hebrews. He has given a 



Prophetic Theology and Ethic 31 

complete philosophical warrant to the method em- 
ployed by the ancient prophets in their grasping of 
ultimate reality by exalting the method of " in- 
tuition, " the philosophical complement of the theo- 
logical "inspiration," in showing its superiority to 
the Greek logic as the proper instrument of specula- 
tion. James has done an equal service in attaching 
a claim for the validity of religious experience as a 
source of the knowledge of reality. Nowhere can 
we get a clearer appreciation of the value of spiritual 
intuition than in the study of the permanent com- 
bined results of the prophets of Israel and the 
teachings of Jesus. 

I 

By the aid of the mystical approach to reality 
the prophets discovered the value of the individual. 
Let us consider how this came about. 

Primitive or tribal religion subordinated the value 
of the individual completely to the interests of the 
tribe. The individual existed for the tribe. Prim- 
itive Israelitish religion was distinguished from other 
primitive tribal religions by the conviction that the 
tribe also existed for the benefit of the individual. 
But the value of the individual is not ultimately 
appraised till revealed by the prophetic experience. 

The prophet not only finds God but in so doing 
first truly finds himself. As he learns to know God 
he also learns that God already knows him as a 
separate personality, not merely as a fragment of the 
nation. His "prophetic call" is the discovery that 



32 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

God needs him as the messenger of His Will to His 
people. The consequent dependence of God upon 
an individual as an agent of His working plan 
gives to the individual a supreme value. On making 
the discovery the prophet is at once humbled and 
transported. He knows his past limitations, but, 
in spite of them, he expands with the consciousness 
of potential greatness. God's need of him makes 
the prophet great. 1 

But the prophet's work cannot be carried out in 
isolation. His primary task is to reproduce his own 
type among the people who must be brought equally 
to the realization that prophetic responsibilities 
await them all — that is, that all are called to as- 
sume a share in establishing the divine community. 
God needs all men and so all men acquire an equal 
value with the original prophet. They are called 
upon to repent — not merely to regret the past, but 
radically to remodel their lives on the plan of God's 
Will for the realization of the righteous state. 
When the state is thus realized in righteousness it 
exists for God, but at the same time it also exists for 
the benefit of its lowliest and weakest member. The 
importance of the community is not relatively les- 
sened because of the supreme value given to the 
individual. On the contrary the value of the com- 
munity is raised to the highest point because in it 
alone can the individual find his task and thus come 
to complete self-realization. Salvation for the 

1 Witness the calls of Isaiah and Jeremiah, Isa. 6 and Jere- 
miah i. 



Prophetic Theology and Ethic 33 

individual consists in forgetting to seek his private 
salvation but instead in seeking the salvation of the 
whole community. 

II 

This now becomes the prophet's task. He must 
bring others to unite with him in seeking to organize 
the social life of mankind according to the Will of 
God. A righteous society or state cannot exist in 
isolation in the midst of a godless world any more 
than the righteous individual can be in safety in the 
midst of a wicked social order. The earlier tribal 
religion held that Jehovah's chosen people could 
exist in safety, though surrounded by strong nations 
who cared nothing for Jehovah's Will. The prophets 
came to see clearly that the nations who "knew not 
Jehovah" were both a corrupting influence and an 
external menace. God's plan for the Israelites 
could not work out except as it included the heathen 
peoples in its scope. In the eyes of the popular 
religion the destiny of the heathen was to be held in 
a state of complete subjugation by the "chosen 
people." But the prophets had a more religious 
and ethical solution. The great nations must also 
be won to allegiance to Jehovah and His Will for 
their own sakes as well as for the sake of Israel. 
Israel and all the other nations exist for that future 
community organized according to the Will of God 
and including all mankind. 

In fact the prophets see Jehovah as already over- 
ruling the wills of the great nations. "According 



34 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

to Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah, Jehovah not 
only has power over Israel and its armies, but the 
Assyrians and the Egyptians are at His disposal to 
carry out His plans." 1 

The priests fostered the idea that by means of the 
national cult with its offerings and sacrifices Jehovah 
would be led miraculously to protect His favorites 
from the invasion and conquest overtaking other 
smaller peoples. The prophets denounced this as 
vain and superstitious folly. In opposition to the 
priests they declared that the nation was not ful- 
filling the pleasure of Jehovah. It could not do so 
because it was not aware of His plan. It could only 
be awakened by some terrible lesson, and Jehovah 
was able to teach that lesson by the punitive power 
of the great conquering nations under His control. 
When at length Israel should have truly learned its 
lesson then it would become the world teacher. 
Universal peace and a league of all nations knowing 
Jehovah and fulfilling His Will would come as the 
culminating achievement. In this universal com- 
munity of God the individual would find his com- 
plete well-being and enduring safety. 2 

But till the day should come when Israel would 
realize its God-given mission there must be such 
disciplinary suffering as would awaken the people 
to the consciousness of their high calling. 

In no respect does the prophetic religion throw a 
clearer light upon the dark mystery of existence than 

1 Cad Marti, op. cit. p. 131. 
2 Cf. Isa. 2, Micah 4. 



Prophetic Theology and Ethic 35 

in the profound insight into the divine mission of 
suffering. 

Hosea learns from the anguish of his soul in deal- 
ing with an adulterous wife what God's attitude is 
toward His faithless people. He also learns from 
his insight into God's dealing with Israel how he 
should conduct himself towards his wife whom he 
loyally persists in loving despite her treachery to 
himself. Instead of inflicting upon her the penalty 
of the law, instead of hardening his heart to the 
point of hating her, he forgives, woos and wins her 
back to the ways of decency and honor, and be- 
comes the redeemer of his wife, as Jehovah is the 
Redeemer of Israel. The adulterous wife and the 
adulterous nation must suffer, but their suffering 
is essential to their restoration and comes from a 
lover (human in one case, Divine in the other) who 
does not punish because of the bitter resentment of 
his soul, but because of his redeeming love over- 
coming the feeling of resentment. 

But even more striking is the fact that the 
prophet's own attitude towards his people comes to 
be exactly the same as Jehovah's attitude. The 
prophet is a penitent. He has been a sinner, but he 
has sought God and received forgiveness and puri- 
fication. He is not in an attitude of rebellion but of 
obedience. It does not occur to him to seek to save 
his own soul by separating himself from his people 
and so escape the calamities that have fallen upon 
them. He shares their fate while trying to save 
them from it. He suffers with them though he 



36 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

deserves no punishment. Nay, in working for their 
good he incurs their ill will and hatred. Speaking 
the truth to them in love he is hewn in sunder by the 
sword which they turn against him in their anger. 
He dies for love of them — seeking not his own re- 
ward. The prophet's life, not merely his work, 
becomes a theodicy. 

Amos believed that a righteous remnant would es- 
cape the calamities inflicted upon the nation. The 
experiences of the captivity taught men that in 
great calamities the righteous and wicked alike 
suffer the same external evils. During the captivity 
those born on foreign soil came to utter the thought 
that they were the innocent victims of their parents' 
sins. "The parents have eaten sour grapes and the 
children's teeth are set on edge." Against this 
complaint Ezekiel dogmatizes with the utterance of 
the principle that each soul is to be treated according 
to its personal merits — the father is not to suffer for 
the son or the son for the father. But this dogma 
overlooked the plain facts of observation and ex- 
perience. 

The true situation was that discovered by 
Ezekiel's successor, the anonymous prophet some- 
times called "The Great Unknown, " sometimes the 
Second Isaiah. He saw that the same external 
ordeal awaits the evil and the good — but that the 
reward of the righteous is internal and spiritual. 
The righteous accepts the suffering and profits by 
it. It becomes a bond of union between himself 
and Jehovah. He accepts it without complaint or 



Prophetic Theology and Ethic 37 

outcry — "as a sheep before his shearers is dumb." 
Hereby he enters into the inheritance of the blessed 
by becoming Jehovah's agent — acting as His ' 'suf- 
fering servant." "He sees the travail of his soul 
and is satisfied." Nay more than satisfied — he 
knows the joy and triumph of God's victorious Son. 

Ill 

Modern apologists see in pain a danger signal of 
warning. Pain is often the concomitant of the effort 
of nature to grow, expand, and to heal. Thus the 
object of pain is ultimately beneficent. 

The discovery of the true means to eradicate 
social pains may lead to the discovery of the divine 
intention in respect to the adjustment of human rela- 
tions. The rule of service is the program advocated 
by the prophet for the eradication of the social causes 
of suffering. The suffering prophet finds escape 
from his private woes by giving himself in service to 
the sinful and weak. 

Humanity has a common destiny. The righteous 
can only survive (in the biological sense) by "mak- 
ing many righteous." The righteous individual 
must impart his qualities to his own people. The 
righteous people must then spread that divine qual- 
ity till it reaches all mankind. The escape from 
suffering must be a social, solidaristic, universal 
escape, or what we might call social salvation. 
Hence the prophetic theology sets the foreign mis- 
sionary his task of a campaign for world-wide salva- 
tion. The nations must be brought into the fold. 



38 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

The suffering servant has been characterized by 
George Adam Smith in his work "The Book of 
Isaiah, "as: "A human figure of lofty character and 
unfailing perseverance who makes God's work of 
redemption his own, puts his heart into it, and is 
upheld by God's hand. God, let us understand, has 
committed His Cause upon earth to human agents." l 
God, for His part, is supremely interested in human 
concerns. "He is One Who arises and comes 
down, Who makes virtue His Cause and righteous- 
ness His passion." 2 

The nation is also conceived as the suffering serv- 
ant. Not ruling other nations with a rod of iron 
as a mark of the favoritism of an All-powerful God, 
we may find a humiliated, conquered nation, in the 
hour of its seeming failure aspiring to be used as an 
ally of God. 

God Himself also suffers through His sympathies 
and in His arduous toil. His work is not lightly ac- 
complished by the mere utterance of a fiat. It is 
still in the process of accomplishment and in it He 
also travails. " In the affliction of His people He is 
afflicted. " How this contrasts with the priestly 
teaching that God is able to do all things independ- 
ently of the co-operation of man, but that He waits 
to be persuaded by the use of correct ritual to give 
good gifts to His dependent children. This con- 
ception lacks the ethical quality and robs God of the 

x 0p. cit. vol. II, p. 133. 
2 Ibid. p. 140. 



Prophetic Theology and Ethic 39 

character of loyalty to the best interests of His crea- 
tures and robs man of the opportunity to enter 
into co-operative companionship with the Most 
High. The prophetic theology, in contrast, is 
moral, developmental and normal. God does not 
inflict punishment out of wanton cruelty or capri- 
cious anger but uses pain to develop men of the high- 
est character, through whom His Own designs are 
accomplished. This is the interpretation to the 
understanding of the 53rd Chapter of Isaiah, es- 
pecially in the concluding verses: 

My righteous servant shall make many righteous, 
And himself will bear the burdens of their iniquities, 
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, 
And with the strong shall he divide his spoil, 
Because he poured out his life-blood, 
And was numbered with the transgressors, 
And himself bore the sins of many, 
And interposed for transgressors. 1 

The prophet's attitude towards sin is the same as 
that towards suffering. He does not reproach others 
for causing him these heavy burdens but by being 
a sharer in the community's sins he labors to remove 
the sources of the sins from the community. His 
consolation is that his sin-bearing and pain-bearing 
have a value in the sight of God for the benefit of 
mankind, that they set a lofty standard to his 
fellows and have a purging and sanctifying influence 
upon his own soul. His sin-bearing effects a change 
for the better in the character of the sinners who 

ilsa. 53:11, 12. (Kent's Version.) 



40 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

come under the spell of his influence as well as in 
his own character. 

IV 

Underlying and inseparable from the development 
of ethical universalism with its doctrine of service is 
the growing consciousness of the unity of God — 
theological monotheism. As Marti says, "One 
might transcribe every page of the prophets of the 
eighth century. They contain a unanimous testi- 
mony to the sole, unlimited and irresistible power of 
Jehovah, and they are at the same time a proof that 
in its essence monotheism existed from the very first 
and the earliest prophets." l 

It is important to remember the logical connection 
between monotheism and ethical universalism. 
The prophets could not separate their doctrine of 
the One God from the doctrine of the solidarity of 
mankind. The priestly writers were inconsistent 
when they took over the prophetic doctrine of 
monotheism while rejecting the prophetic ethical 
universalism. They held to the ridiculous and 
presumptuous views that the One Omnipotent God 
remained interested alone in the Jewish race. This 
narrow conception is satirized by a Jewish writer of 
the Hellenistic period in the Book of Jonah. The 
narrowness of that fictitious false prophet receives 
the scorn of this liberalized author of a parabolic 
writing. Jonah is made ridiculous by his attempts 
to escape from the territory of Jehovah, by his 

^p. cit. p. 132. 



Prophetic Theology and Ethic 41 

chagrin at God's mercy to the Ninevites after their 
repentance, and by his caring more about the fate 
of a gourd vine than for the fate of a great city. 
The work seems almost to strike a note of levity at 
the expense of the tribal idea of God, but the Book 
receives a great weight of seriousness from the 
approving use made of it by our Lord. We must 
remember that humor was one of the prophetic 
weapons which Jesus Himself did not hesitate to 
employ even in dealing with the most serious mat- 
ters. 1 

V 

Because of his knowledge of God's power and love 
the prophet knows how the future will ultimately 
unfold. He can foresee but one ending to the drama 
of life — a happy one. The tragic estrangement 
between God and humanity will yet be done away 
and there will be an eternal reconciliation. How- 
ever long the tragic episode may be drawn out by 
human perversity the end will be in the phrase of 
Dante, a Divina Commedia. 

There is to be a universal human brotherhood, 
founded upon mutual love and service and upon the 
immediate knowledge of God and guidance by Him. 
Through what agency is this golden age, this reign 
of God on earth to be accomplished? 

In the times of Israel's oppression a deliverer was 
anxiously looked for. Who and what should the 
leader be? All answers agreed "an anointed one" 

x See St. Luke 10:41, Moffat's Version. 



42 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

— in the Hebrew " a Messiah, " that is, one especially 
consecrated to the office or task. There were three 
kinds of Messiahs or "anointed ones" — kings, 
priests and prophets. It is a strange fact that 
Christian theology has almost exclusively identified 
the word " Messiah" with kingship. The popular 
imperialistic idea of the Jews was doubtless at one 
time that the Messiah should be a conquering king 
who would deliver Israel from its enemies, extend 
the kingdom into an empire, and establish the inner 
well-being of the people. Isaiah and Jeremiah 
looked forward at times to a righteous king who 
would carry out their program of social justice. 
But apart from a few passages in the writings of 
these two prophets and in allusions by Haggai and 
Zechariah to contemporary Davidic princes, the 
monarchical idea of Messiahship is not common in 
the Old Testament. It finds a most interesting 
illustration in those passages of the prophecy of the 
Great Unknown wherein he hails Cyrus the Persian 
as Jehovah's Messiah. This is because in his uni- 
versalism the prophet believed that the emperor 
was an agent of Jehovah in rehabilitating the Jewish 
people. 

Comparatively little attention has been paid by 
Christian theologians to the expectation that the 
future happy state of the Jews is to rest in the hands 
of the Jewish priesthood. This idea underlay the 
theocratic dream of the restored Israel in Ezekiel. 
It was part and parcel of the aspiration of the post- 
exilic priesthood and has left traces in the book of 



Prophetic Theology and Ethic 43 

Daniel. In Daniel the government is to be in the 
hands of the "saints," as he designates the priest- 
hood, but the Deliverer is no less than Jehovah Him- 
self, Who is expected to intervene by a catastrophic 
miracle in which the heathen are to be utterly 
crushed into submission. 

We read of the anointing of the prophet Elisha by 
Elijah. But as a rule "anointing," as applied to 
the prophets, was used figuratively of the divine 
spiritual unction as in Isa. 61 : 1. 

In our study of the Deutero-Isaiah we have found 
the conception that the coming deliverer is not a 
king but a suffering prophet. The prophet is to 
accomplish the stupendous task through moral 
leadership and religious instruction. 

This type of Messianic idea is the most ethical, 
the most rational and exalted. In place of the 
leadership of a political king or priestly theocracy 
it puts that of the God-knower, as that which is to 
bring in the consummation of the world drama. 

This is the prophetic interpretation of the Mes- 
sianic idea and it was in this sense, as we shall see, 
that Jesus must have conceived of His Own Messiah- 
ship. It is the highest religious and moral concep- 
tion possible. The goal of humanity is not to be 
reached through conquest (as in the kingly Messianic 
idea), nor by a stupendous miracle (as in the priestly 
Messianic idea), but through divinely guided moral 
leadership, following a program of suffering service, 
establishing the universal community — the reign 
of God (prophetic, Messianic, Universalism) . In 



44 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

this community exploitation whether by kings or 
priests is necessarily self-excluded. 

We have now seen how the prophets discovered : 
(i) the value of the individual; (2) the meaning of 
history as related to a divine plan ; (3) the univer- 
sal scope of that plan to include all mankind; (4) 
the fact that the human race is one as God is one; 
and (5) the means of moral leadership whereby the 
prophets believe that the triumph of God's reign 
on earth is to be secured. 

We have next the painful task of turning from this 
glorious vision to the actual historical development 
as it was largely moulded by the enemies of the 
prophets, the priestly aristocrats and exploiters of 
religion. 



Priesthood Establishes a Monopoly 45 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PRIESTHOOD ESTABLISHES A MONOPOLY AND 

DEVELOPS A LEGALISTIC ETHIC PRIESTLY 

THEOLOGY 

One of the greatest contributions of the "Higher 
Criticism" to the cause of the prophetic religion 
has been the uncovering of the story of priestly 
aggrandisement through intrigue and of the literary 
devices by which the priests covered their tracks 
so skilfully as to deceive subsequent generations for 
two millenniums and a half. We will now briefly 
recapitulate the results of these critical and histor- 
ical investigations. 

I 

After the settlement of the Israelites in Pales- 
tine priestly colleges began to grow up on the site 
of various Amorite shrines which were converted 
into Israelite holy places by being associated with 
incidents in the lives of the patriarchs. 

The judicial functions of the priests, as we have 
already seen, had put into their hands a powerful 
weapon of exploitation which enabled them to con- 
spire with the kings and nobles to "grind the face 
of the poor." 

Owing to their proximity to the kingly court cer- 
tain of the shrines soon won greater prestige, influ- 
ence and wealth — Bethel in the Northern kingdom 



46 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

and Jerusalem in the Southern. In place of the 
harmony that had previously existed rivalry, com- 
petition and jealousy began to develop between 
the different holy places. 

II 

A new stage began after the fall of the northern 
kingdom which had greatly weakened the prestige 
of the local cults, though Bethel continued suffi- 
ciently important to hold the envious regard of 
Jerusalem. Not content with its position of superi- 
ority over the other local shrines the ambitious 
Jerusalem priesthood desired a complete monopoly 
of the priestly prerogatives. Their opportunity 
came and their plans were matured in the reign of 
Josiah — a weak and superstitious king — who was 
readily made the mere tool of the priestly faction. 
They now planned to use the secular arm of 
the monarch to kill off or to subordinate their 
priestly rivals as in the past they had dealt with the 
prophets. 

The first step in the conspiracy is to forge a new 
version of the customary law and rewrite the his- 
tory of Israel to make it appear that Jehovah Him- 
self expressly desired that His cultus should be 
concentrated at Jerusalem and there hold a com- 
plete monopoly. Provision was made in this law 
for the destruction of the non-Jerusalemic temples 
and for the bringing of their priests to the capital 
in a menial position. 1 

!Deut. 7: 5. 



Priesthood Establishes a Monopoly 47 

In this code recognition is given to the monarchy 
and also to the office of the prophet, but the mon- 
arch is instructed to follow obediently the law (made 
by the priests in their own interest) and the prophet 
is restricted to exercising the mere function of pre- 
diction. He is forbidden to teach anything con- 
trary to what the priests have written in this law 
and by implication is not to concern himself with 
present-day issues. His position is rendered very 
precarious by the provision that in the event of 
the failure of any of his predictions he is to be put 
to death as a false and presumptuous prophet. 1 
Traces of the prophetic influence are supposed to 
be found in the presence of the provisions for the 
protection of the poor which are retained from the 
earlier mishpat and are even extended. But the 
value of the humane provisions was subsequently 
nullified by the simple fact that they were not en- 
forced. On the side of religion the rights of the 
laity were restricted by withdrawing from them 
the privilege of sacrificing, which had been recog- 
nized in the Code of the Covenant. 

The success of the forgery was immediate. Its 
influence was more enduring than even that of the 
later clerical forgery known as the pseudo-Isidorian 
Decretals. The account of the reforms of Josiah 
in the Second Book of Kings, chapter 22, f, reveals 
the extent to which foreign elements had been ad- 
mitted to the temple of Jehovah. These recog- 
nized abuses might serve as a seeming justification 

1 Deut. 13: 1 ; 18:20-22. 



48 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

for the severe measures employed. But the real 
object aimed at by the priests in Jerusalem comes 
out in the treatment accorded the temples and 
shrines outside Jerusalem, which had hitherto shared 
the priestly vested rights that the Jerusalem priest- 
hood now desired completely to monopolize. It 
was against the temple of Jehovah at Bethel, which 
had early received the bitter denunciations of the 
prophet Amos, and the other hillside altars in Sa- 
maria that the most drastic measures were taken. 
Not only were the altars destroyed but their offi- 
ciating priests were massacred. Also all wizards 
and clairvoyants, all, in fact, who were in any sense 
rivals to the oracle of the temple in Jerusalem were 
suppressed. 

The priests who had officiated at the hillside 
altars in the kingdom of Judah were not massacred 
but their treatment was severe. After their shrines 
had been desecrated they were brought to the tem- 
ple at Jerusalem and degraded to the position of 
temple servants, whose office was to perform the 
more menial tasks connected with the worship. 
This movement received the approval of the prophet 
Ezekiel who regarded it as a just punishment for 
their practices. 1 

What was the net result? Certain of the more 
flagrant heathen rites were abolished. The country 
priests were taken away from the people. This 
may have been a blessing to the peasants though 
it left them without any religious leadership in 

1 Ezek. 44: 10. 



Priesthood Establishes a Monopoly 49 

place of an evil one. As we have seen, the provi- 
sions for the amelioration of the lot of the poor re- 
mained unenforced. 

On the whole, it was a sweeping victory of the 
priests over the prophets. The latter are subor- 
dinated to the control of the priestly document. The 
principle of priestly authority, which the prophets 
had always held to be a usurpation contrary to 
the mishpat of Jehovah, received recognition. The 
underlying principle of the Amorite cultus that 
religion was essentially a matter of sacrifice, and 
that the favor of Jehovah was to be retained by a 
particular form of worship, now triumphs over 
the prophetic principle that the protection of Je- 
hovah can only be expected by a state where justice 
and love of mercy prevail. Most important of all 
the principle of legalism in place of the principle of 
direct spiritual guidance through enlightened leader- 
ship was firmly established. "The interposition of 
a law as an absolute authority between God and the 
human soul is opposed to the very core and center 
of prophetic teaching. " l 

III 

The prophets of Jerusalem seem to have been 
parties to this priestly coup d'etat. But it is not 
always borne in mind that the prophets in question 
belong to the supporters of the established order. 
They were the "prophesiers of smooth things" 
or "false prophets." After the reform they went 

1 Marti, op. cit. p. 289. 



50 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

about declaring that now that the temple worship 
had been purified and the hillside altars destroyed 
according to the Will of Jehovah, His people could 
rest assured in the confidence that His Omnipo- 
tent protection would deliver them from the con- 
quering powers of Egypt and Babylon. This false 
confidence was denounced by Jeremiah (so far as 
we know, the only surviving adherent of the ancient 
insurgent school of prophecy) as a superstition 
founded upon " lying words." 1 When the people 
were flocking to the temple seeking for protection, 
after Josiah had been slain by Pharaoh Necho, the 
prophet declared that the temple in which they were 
mistakenly putting their trust was no better than 
a den of thieves in the eyes of Jehovah. It could 
expect only the destruction that had previously 
been meted out to the temple in Shiloh. 

In Jeremiah, chapter 28, we learn how bitterly 
he opposed the false prophets. In his encounter 
with Hananiah, one of their leaders, he declares 
that the people will go into exile and that the 
prophet himself will be overtaken by death within 
two years, which prediction was fulfilled. 

IV 

During the exile not only, on the one side, did 
the prophetic theology reach its acme of develop- 
ment in the humanitarian mysticism and univer- 
salism of the Great Unknown, but, on the other, 
the legalistic type of religion was being elaborated 

^er. 7:4. 



Priesthood Establishes a Monopoly 51 

by its adherents. They spent their time of waiting 
in elaborating a code of laws which would greatly 
enhance the priestly control. The result is found 
in what is known as the Priestly Code. This code 
was later to be published under the sanction of the 
name of Moses who was claimed as its author. 

During the exile the prophet Ezekiel undertook 
to synthesize the priestly and prophetic elements 
of religion. "Born in Jerusalem of priestly family, 
he grew up under the shadow of the temple and 
under the teaching of Jeremiah. Both of these 
powerful influences may be traced throughout all 
his work." 1 He also tries his hand at code making 
but the authority which he claims for it is that of 
his own prophetic vision. It won no popular sup- 
port in comparison with the code which claimed 
the authority of Moses. He embodies the cere- 
monial conception of holiness and looks forward to 
the restoration of the temple and of the priesthood 
to a power greater than that of the prince. The 
priestly monopoly, prestige, and opportunities for 
exploitation are increased. 

Ezekiel embodies a seeming appreciation for the 
prophetic social ideas of religion, but the promi- 
nence which he gives to the ceremonial ideas nulli- 
fies the former. He was utterly unconscious of 
the radical opposition between the two religious 
viewpoints. Therefore, his influence, like that 
of the book of Deuteronomy, contributed to the 

^ent, "Student's Old Testament," vol. VI, p. 24. 
6 



52 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

ultimate triumph of the legalistic and ceremonial 
religion over that of the prophets. 

V 

As a result of the Babylonian captivity the Da- 
vidic monarchy was deposed. In the place of it 
the Jewish theocracy had the control of the local 
administration of government. Those who re- 
turned from the captivity, at least some of them, 
for a time cherished the hope of again establishing 
an independent national existence under Zerub- 
babel, a prince of the house of David, as king. This 
hope was voiced by the " regular" prophets Haggai 
and Zechariah who hailed him as "Messiah." 
These local references were later embodied in the 
traditional "Messianic prophecy" and were later 
supposed by some to be predictions relating to our 
Lord. These prophets, the mouthpieces of the 
priesthood, had been proclaiming that the protec- 
tion of Jehovah could not be counted upon till the 
work of the restoration of the temple had been seri- 
ously undertaken. The following passage taken 
from an insurgent prophet is supposed to protest 
against this view: 

Thus saith Jehovah, Heaven is my home, 

And the earth is my footstool ; 

What manner of house is this that ye would build for 

me? 
And what manner of place is my habitation? 
All these my hand hath made, 
And all these are mine, is Jehovah's oracle. 



Priesthood Establishes a Monopoly 53 

But for these do I have regard, for the afflicted, 
And him who is broken in spirit, and who trembles at my 
word. 

He then adds a bitter description of the practices 
of the cult in which he ranks the ritualistic acts of 
purification as no better than acts of ceremonial 
defilement. 

He who slaughters an ox is also a man-slayer. 

He who sacrifices a sheep also strangles a dog; 

He who brings up an offering also sheds swine's blood. 

He who offers incense as a memorial also blesses an idol. 

As these have chosen their ways, 

And taken pleasure in their abominations; 

So will I choose w r anton outrages for them, 

And will bring on them what they dread; 

Because when I called none answered, 

When I spoke they did not heed. 

But they did what w r as evil in my sight, 

And chose that in which I had no delight. 1 

The prophet Zechariah for his part retorts with 
a denunciation of such insurgent prophets. Their 
complete extermination is foretold. If any one 
should presume to prophesy, even his parents would 
brand him as one who lies in the Name of Jehovah, 
and with a sword in their hand would thrust him 
through. The prophets who survived will repent 
and renounce their prophetic claims, admitting 
that they are in reality but farmers and herdmen 
(mere laymen). 2 

1 Isa. 66, Kent's version. 

2 Zech. 13: 3-5, Kent's version. 



54 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

VI 

The return of the first company of the survivors 
of the exile in the reign of the Persian Artaxerxes, 
under the layman Nehemiah, inaugurated the era 
which was to witness the final stage in priestly ex- 
ploitation. This was founded upon the work of 
Ezra and the other scribes who came with them in 
the second company of returned exiles bringing 
the third codification of the Jewish law which had 
been produced by them during the exile. This code, 
like Deuteronomy, was also predated back to Moses, 
and the history of Israel was re-written as an 
historic romance in which the priesthood are the 
heroes. 

When we turn from reading the prophets to con- 
sider the Priestly Code we are conscious of a com- 
plete change of atmosphere. In place of the pure 
air of the mountain height we breathe the dead air 
of a confined dwelling. In place of the prophetic 
concern with world history, with righteousness, 
justice, brotherhood, we see priests whose idea of 
serving God is by means of inspecting the entrails 
of slain victims, and by the ritualistically correct 
handling of kidneys and other internal organs of 
bulls and goats. 

Holiness is no longer associated with the heroic 
God-conscious type of life, with suffering service, 
but with acts of ritualistic purification. In place 
of the great missionary Messianic ideal, the national 
aspiration seeks merely the continuation of pros- 
perity, protection from enemies and wild beasts, 



Priesthood Establishes a Monopoly 55 

a growth in numbers, and the perpetuity of the 
worship of the temple. In place of the vision of 
the nations flocking to Jehovah to learn His Will, 
there is the conception of the Israelite nation in- 
creasing through the addition of proselytes. 

In place of the prophetic interpretation of history 
with its developmental idea, we find its opposite. 
Even while introducing radical innovations into 
the law they are represented as having had a 
full fledged existence even in the days of Moses. 
Whereas Ezekiel had proposed introducing changes 
in his idea of the restored temple at Jerusalem, the 
priestly method is to represent that its own idea 
had already been historically embodied in the so- 
called "Tabernacle." Ezekiel, as we have seen, 
recognized the fact that the introduction of the 
priests who had officiated at the hillside shrine into 
the temple at Jerusalem in a menial capacity was 
an innovation. The priestly writers, on the con- 
trary, represent the institution of the Levites as 
having existed from the time of Moses. 

It was easy enough to impose upon the ignorance 
of the common people. The priests had only the 
knowledge and insight of the prophets to fear. 
While they feared and hated the living prophet 
they could afford to do honor to those who had de- 
livered their message and died. Considering the 
methods of suppression employed by the priests 
it at first seems a problem how any of the pro- 
phetic writings have been allowed to survive. The 
explanation is not difficult. The prophets had 



56 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

foretold the exile. The priests had said that the 
temple was a talisman against that catastrophe. 
History had proved that the prophets had told the 
truth. This created a wholesome respect for the 
prophetic message. It explains why the social laws 
for the protection of the poor which the prophets 
had advocated were embodied and even extended 
in the Priestly Code. It was to provide a means of 
avoiding a repetition of the calamity. The changed 
attitude toward the prophets is expressed by the 
Chronicler who writes at this period. He con- 
demns those who had not listened to the prophetic 
warning. ' ' But they mocked the messengers of God 
and despised his words and misused his prophets 
until the wrath of Jehovah arose against His people, 
till there was no remedy. So He brought the king 
of the Chaldees upon them. . . . " x 

This posthumous honor is of the letter not of the 
spirit. There is a note of self-congratulation im- 
plying that "If we had lived in the days of the 
fathers we had not been partakers with them in 
the blood of the prophets." But from the ethical 
and theological points of view they remained the 
sons of those who had slain the prophets. The 
priesthood goes on increasing its own influence by 
the theology which it now produces, creating a 
God in its own image. He is a capricious God, 
easily provoked to take awful vengeance and has 
constantly to be placated by sacrifice. He must 
be cajoled by priestly intervention just as He had 

J II Chronicles, 36: 14 f. 



Priesthood Establishes a Monopoly 57 

been by Moses in days gone by. 1 He is an Oriental 
despot Who can only deal with the common people 
through official go-betweens. If any one else 
should presume to approach Him or burn incense 
to Him, He would consume them in His wrath. 
Righteous conduct seems to concern Him less than 
the correct ceremonial deference paid to His Person. 
The marks of holiness are external rather than 
spiritual. "Whoever belongs to the community 
and wishes to take part in the religious festivals, 
either slave or stranger, must be circumcised ; who- 
ever fails to comply with this requirement commits 
a mortal sin. Just as the priest's code throws back 
the Sabbath to creation, so it refers the institution 
of circumcision to the age of Abraham." 2 

"The importance which was attached to these 
external marks of membership in the congregation 
of Jehovah, and of distinction from other peoples, 
was a consequence of the position assigned by the 
legal religion to the Israelites among other nations 
in their relation to Jehovah. . . . Jehovah and 
Israel remained indissolubly united. Even though 
Jehovah was no longer what the peasant religion 
wanted Him to be, even though He has ceased to 
be exclusively the Lord of Israel, and has become 
the Lord of the whole world, yet He has chosen 
Israel as His peculiar people and restricted salva- 
tion to the Jews. . . . Whoever wishes to share 
in the offer of salvation must become a proselyte, 
a member of the Jewish congregation. In reality 

1 Deut. 9: 14. 2 Marti, op. cit. p. 211. 



58 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

the Gentiles only existed for two objects: first, that 
the Lord of the whole earth may show His power 
upon them as He did upon the Egyptians, and on 
the other hand, that they may fill the temple with 
their riches and perform menial services for the 
Jews in their cattle raising and tillage." 1 

"A further consequence of the legal religion was 
that God was removed much further from His 
people, this in spite of the tenacity with which it 
clung to the belief that Israel was God's favorite 
people, and that Israel and Jehovah belonged to 
each other forever. For the law, as we have seen, 
is interposed between them and Jehovah, the God 
of the whole world, becomes an altogether trans- 
cendent Deity. The close personal relation be- 
tween God and the prophet, not to speak of the 
intimate and familiar conversation with God on 
the old 'high places' are things of the past. Such 
an awe attaches to the divine Name Jehovah that 
it is unutterable. God's revelation in the law is 
final, and in the cultus a carefully graded hierarchy 
intervenes between the layman and God." 2 

The most important and radical antagonism be- 
tween the prophets and the priestly legalistic relig- 
ion remains the ethico-theological. Though the 
priests have accepted prophetic monotheism they 
have discarded its essential corollary of universal- 
ism, in place of which we have the narrowest priestly 
particularism fostering the pride and arrogance of 

1 Marti, op. cit. p. 211 f. Cf. Haggai 2: 7, Isa. 60: 5 f, 61 : 5-7. 

2 Marti, op. cit. p. 219-220. 



Priesthood Establishes a Monopoly 59 

caste and race. Opposed to the idea of the direct 
personal guidance of the individual and the com- 
munity we have an insistence upon the intermed- 
cling of an official class. In place of an immanent, 
personal divine Friend and Father the priests pre- 
sent an unapproachable, transcendent God. In 
place of the idea of progressive revelation and guid- 
ance, revelation becomes a matter of a closed book. 
The moral degradation to which this system led 
reached its lowest level when the high priestly office 
came to be sold to the highest bidder as we read 
in the Second Book of Maccabees, chapter 4. 

What is believed to be a prophetic fragment of un- 
known authorship belonging to this period of corrup- 
tion which came under the rule of the Antiochian 
dynasty, is preserved in the following passage: 
But the teraphim speak vanity 
And the diviners see lies 
And idle dreams they relate 
And in vain they offer comfort; 
Therefore the people wander like sheep 
They suffer because there is no shepherd. 
My wrath is hot upon the shepherds 
And upon the he-goats will I bring punishments. 1 
Thus saith Jehovah to me, 
Shepherd the flock of the slaughter whose possessors 

slaughter them and hold themselves not guilty: 
And they who sell them say, Blessed be Jehovah, for I 

am rich! 
And their shepherds have no compassion upon them. 2 

1 Zech. 10: 2, 3, Kent's version. 

2 Zech. 11 : 4-6, Kent's version. 



60 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

Thus did the prophets continue to bear witness 
against the priestly exploiters but were powerless 
to prevent their evil practices. 

We shall now examine the grounds in fact which 
justified such prophetic denunciations as the fore- 
going. 

VII 

Having secured the necessary theological and 
legal background in the Priestly Code — the priests 
were soon able to exploit their powers to their own 
economic advantage. "While the priests had to 
acknowledge the derivation of their privileges from 
the Law, what they derived was something very 
substantial. They drew unto themselves a steady 
proportion of the riches of the people. It was not 
only a privileged position which the law gave them ; 
it was material wealth." 1 Miraculous powers had 
been ascribed in the priestly narrative to Aaron's 
rod — and the belief in the magical powers of the 
priests was heightened by the stories of the plagues 
of Egypt — the passage of the Red Sea, etc. It was 
not on the power of legal enforcement but upon 
the cultivation of superstitious fear that the priests 
relied to secure their exactions — and with apparent 
success. 

The Temple from the time of the Exile to that 
of Christ became not only the great religious monop- 
oly of the Jews but also their great financial Trust. 2 

1 Edwyn Bevan — ''Jerusalem Under the High Priests" — 
London, 1912, p. 9. 

2 On this subject see "Jerusalem," vol. I, Ch. VII, pp. 351- 



Priesthood Establishes a Mow poly 61 

The priests were the largest non-productive class 
— and together with the Levites and other Temple 
servants numbered many thousands. The Tem- 
ple and the individual priests must have held large 
landed estates. 2 Because of their large revenues 
the priests had all the advantages — and they held 
a monopoly of various forms of trade. 

It requires twenty pages of Prof. Schurer's "His- 
tory of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ" 
(English Translation, div. II, vol. I, pp. 234-254) 
to enumerate and briefly describe the priestly emol- 
uments in the time of Jesus. Of this we give the 
briefest summary: 

Of the sacrificial victims the priests received the 
whole of the (1) sin offerings, and (2) the trespass 
offerings. They got the largest share of the (3) 
meat offerings. All of these sacrifices were of fre- 
quent occurrence. The (4) "shewbread" also fell 
to their lot. All of these could be consumed only 
by the priests. 

Of the (5) thank offerings the priests received 
the breast and right shoulder, of the (6) burnt of- 
ferings they received the hides, from the sale of 
which Philo estimates they received a large income. 
The hides or fleeces of all offerings fell to the priests. 

Though the sum derived from these sources was 
large it was far less than that from the dues levied 
upon the fruits of the soil and the offspring of 

366, George Adam Smith and Schurer's "History of the Jews in 
the Time of Jesus Christ" — div. II, vol. I, pp. 234-254. 
2 Smith, op. cit. p. 360. 



62 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

cattle which included, (i) the first fruits of wheat, 
barley, grapes, fig trees, pomegranates, olives and 
honey — thus the priests received the earliest crops 
of the year. Those near Jerusalem brought fresh 
fruits — those further away brought them dried. 

(2) Next came the terumah — distinct from the 
first fruits — which meant the best and choicest of 
the fruits and vegetables. This amounted to from 
one-sixtieth to one-fortieth of the entire crops. 

(3) Of the rest of the crops a "tithe," i.e. one- 
tenth, was paid to the Levites, who gave one-tenth 
of their share to the priests. (4) Of the kneaded 
dough each family must give one-twenty-fourth 
to the priests (public bakers gave one-forty-eighth) 
— whether the flours used were wheat, rye, barley, 
spelt or oats. In addition (a) the firstborn of all 
the cattle, when male, belonged to the priests. If 
clean (i.e., suitable for sacrifice or food) they were 
given in kind. When (b) unclean (i.e., ass, horse, 
and camel) they were to be redeemed by payment 
of value plus one-fifth, (c) A tax of five shekels 
had to be paid by rich and poor alike for every first- 
born son. 

In addition to the sacrifices the priests received 
the shoulder, two cheeks and stomach of all animals 
slain for food. They also had a share of the pro- 
ceeds of sheep shearing. Besides these, the votive 
offerings — the bans, indemnities, and voluntary 
gifts and offerings enriched the unproductive priest- 
hood. The Temple also levied a tax of one-half 
shekel on all males over twenty- one years. 



Priesthood Establishes a Monopoly 63 

The priests owned slaves. Whether they were 
purchased directly or no is not told — but probably 
the majority in any case came into slavery as the 
result of debts which they could not pay their 
priestly creditors. 

In summing the matter up George Adam Smith 
says: "From all this we see not only how large in 
these later times the revenues of the priesthood 
and temple had become, but what a busy center 
the latter was both of trade and finance. Among 
the chief priests there were many with large for- 
tunes. The High Priest and his counsellors were 
trustees and accountants on a large scale — the more 
so that there was, except for a part of the period, 
no separate civil authority. But they were also 
great traders. To assist them in the reception, 
investment and distribution of funds, they had a 
great staff of officials, duly organized and entitled. 
But, indeed, in those days nearly every priest must 
have been a trader. " l 

Thus the priest was not only a spiritual middle- 
man — but he was the economic middleman of 
trade — who handled what others had produced 
and exploited the needs of both producer and con- 
sumer. 

If Jeremiah had been justified in calling the Tem- 
ple in his day " a den of robbers" — how vastly more 
fitting was the same characterization of it by Jesus 
in His day — when He aimed at its complete over- 
George Adam Smith, op. cit. p. 366. 



64 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

throw. The Temple at Jerusalem was as truly a 
Temple of Mammon as the Bank of England or 
the New York Stock Exchange. But unlike the 
latter it pretended to be the Temple of God. 



The Apocalypses Unmasked 65 



CHAPTER V 

THE APOCALYPSES UNMASKED 

When Antiochus Epiphanes came to the throne 
of Syria of which Judea was then a part, the Jew- 
ish religion had seemingly but little hold left on 
the popular mind. Especially among the educated 
classes there had been a turning away from things 
Jewish to things Grecian. This tendency was en- 
couraged in every way by the king, who was an ar- 
dent champion of the Greek Kultur. At length 
he thought the time had come when the last rem- 
nant of expiring Judaism could be extirpated by 
the use of force. He issued a royal decree abolish- 
ing sacrifices to Jehovah and attaching the death 
penalty to the observance of the Jewish ceremonial 
law. He caused the temple of Jehovah to be dedi- 
cated to Zeus, the chief god of the Greek Pantheon. 
The Hebrew sacred books were confiscated. 

This period of oppression led to a violent reac- 
tion. The indifferent were called back to a re- 
newed loyalty to the faith of their fathers. Many 
Jews met the martyr's death for refusing to sacrifice 
to the pagan god, or to commit ceremonial acts 
forbidden by the Torah. The reaction led, further, 
to the successful Maccabean uprising on the polit- 
ical side. A new type of religious writing called the 
Apocalyptic was called into existence by this crisis, 
of which the book of Daniel was the first product. 



66 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

Without disparaging the true patriotism of the 
Maccabean priests we may say that both the polit- 
ical and literary movement had the same object, 
the retrieving of their fortunes by the priests through 
rallying the people to the support of the national 
religion and institutions. 

The Apocalyptic movement was a desperate de- 
vice born of a desperate emergency. The hand 
of the priestly intriguer is to be discerned. As the 
Deuteronomic and Priestly Codes had been pre- 
dated and vested with the authority of Moses, so 
by the same familiar priestly device the Apocalyp- 
ses were predated and furnished with the authority 
of a recognized prophet whose name was forged 
to the document. As the priestly writers had in- 
vented fictitious characters and presented them as 
actors in historic events so the author of the Apoc- 
alypse of Daniel invented Shadrach, Meshack 
and Abednego in the fiery furnace and Daniel's 
den of lions, to illustrate their contention that all 
who remained loyal to Judaism under persecution 
might hope for miraculous deliverance. But if 
this should fail they added still another promise 
that all who should die for the faith would find a., 
happy resurrection from the dead in the approach- 
ing epoch of the Jewish world empire. 

In this writing history appears in the form of 
prophecy. The prophecy is alleged to have come 
in the form of visions, the ultimate object of 
which is to show that upon the ruins of the world 
empires of Babylon, Medea, Persia and Macedon 



The Apocalypses Unmasked 67 

the new world empire is to be miraculously erected 
by God. 

I 

The theology of the Apocalypses is distinctly 
of the priestly variety and opposed to the prophetic. 
The Apocalyptic idea of God is transcendent. He 
no longer communes with men directly but uses 
angels as His mediators. Accordingly He is not 
conceived as working through world history, as 
the prophets held. Instead He lets it take its evil 
course till He is ready to smash it and erect a new 
world order on the ruins of the old. Thus the 
prophetic developmental idea is lost. 

The prophetic universalism is also lost. Not the 
conversion but the destruction of the heathen is 
anticipated. Instead of the prophetic anticipation 
of a world federation there is to be a world hegem- 
ony of the Jews in which they will exact tribute 
of the heathen and rule them with a rod of iron. 

The prophetic ethic gives place to the ceremonial. 
The heroes of Daniel are not champions of the poor, 
not suffering servants, but those who pray toward 
Jerusalem, refuse to eat things ceremonially unclean, 
and to bow down to idols. 

In consequence of their loyalty Daniel and his 
associates do not have to wait till after death for 
their rewards, but rise to positions of wealth and 
splendor in the court of Babylon. Wonderful 
opportunities to exploit his power of interpreting 
dreams are made good use of by Daniel. 



68 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

The Apocalypses employed the obscure allegori- 
cal form in order that their real meaning might be 
hidden from the authorities while the faithful would 
be able to discern the signs which were promised 
as immediately preceding the expected deliverance. 
Such a sign is found in Daniel 2: 43: "And whereas 
you saw the iron mixed with miry clay, they shall 
mingle themselves by marriage alliances, but they 
shall not cling to one another, even as iron does 
not mingle with clay." This was a covert allusion 
to two unfortunate intermarriages between the 
reigning houses of Syria and Egypt. The words 
that follow are intended to convey to the enlight- 
ened reader that the promised deliverance is not 
far off: "And in the days of these kings shall the 
God of Heaven set up a kingdom which shall never 
be destroyed nor shall the sovereignty be left to 
another people; but it shall break in pieces and 
destroy all these kingdoms and it shall stand for- 
ever. " The miraculous nature of the intervention 
is insisted upon as follows: "Inasmuch as you see 
that a stone was cut out of the mountain but not 
with hands, and that it break in pieces the iron, 
the brass, the clay, the silver and the gold. " x 

II 

It would be extremely difficult to decide how far 
the Apocalypses represented a deliberate fraud on 
the part of the priests, and how far the authors of 
them were themselves deceived by their false hopes. 

1 Daniel 2:44, 45. 



The Apocalypses Unmasked 69 

Many passages incorporated into some of them, 
especially the book of Enoch, seem to have the ring 
of genuine sincerity. This book is quoted as gen- 
uine Scripture in our canonical book of Jude, and 
there are many passages in the Gospels that seem 
to be paraphrases of passages in Enoch. 

For the most part the Apocalypses seem to have 
been the work of Pharisees. This sect seems to 
have been the successor of the sect of the Assideans 
of whom we hear as co-operating for a time with 
the Maccabean revolution. They seem to have 
been advocates of non-resistance, not as a moral 
principle, but on the ground that human effort 
would be valueless to accomplish an end which they 
held could be accomplished only by the strength 
of Omnipotence. To hasten this event they not 
only observed all the requirements of the Torah 
but insisted in addition on the observance of a 
great mass of oral tradition of later date. They 
laid emphasis upon the doctrines of the immor- 
tality of the soul, of the existence of good and evil 
spirits, and of predestination. 

These doctrines, so strongly resembling the famil- 
iar teachings of the Persian religion, are held by 
Prof. Lawrence Mills to indicate that the name 
Pharisee was applied to them because their depend- 
ence upon Persian sources was recognized. But 
the important matter is not the source of their 
views but the views themselves. However, a cer- 
tain parallelism between the Persian Apocalyptic 



70 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

writings and the Pharisee Apocalypses is worth 
noting. 

The survivals of the Persian Apocalypses in their 
present form are dated by critics between the third 
and sixth centuries of the Christian era, but are 
held by Prof. Mills to embody fragments of early 
Apocalypses antedating the appearance of the book 
of Daniel among the Jews. While it may be dim- 
cult to establish the fact of any literary dependence 
on one side or the other, it is to be noted that in 
each case the Apocalyptic literature arose among 
a people threatened with extinction, and, in their 
despair, looking for a supernatural deliverer. It is 
also interesting to note that the personal figure of 
the promised deliverer has far greater prominence 
in the Persian than in the Jewish Apocalypses. 
Prof. Lehmann (in Chantepie de la Saussaye's 
Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, vol. I, p. 199) 
has constructed a composite Apocalypse out of the 
Persian material, of which the following is a sum- 
mary: 1 

In the period of the last three millenniums of the 
world history the power of evil is to become pre- 
dominant. The oppression of the righteous by 
the powers of evil will call into existence prophets 
and heroes who will save the faithful and finally 
establish the supremacy of Ahura Mazda (the 
righteous God) forever. The coming of the final 
struggle will be heralded by signs in the sun and the 

1 Cf. Prof. West's Edition of the Pahlavi Texts in the Sacred 
Books of the East, 



The Apocalypses Unmasked 71 

moon, by earthquakes and tempests. Fear and 
terror will prevail among the sons of light. Hordes 
of the enemies of the Persians will fall upon their 
land and turn fertile plains into deserts. Many who 
seek to save their lives shall narrowly escape, while 
their wives, children and property will be destroyed. 
A horde of demons will appear from the East. 

The hero Hashedar, the first son of Zoroaster, the 
hero of the first of the future thousand year epochs, 
is to be born. He will assemble the remnants of the 
faithful, and thrice shall he defeat the enemy, so 
that the prince of the demons with all his followers 
will be summoned against him. Then the right- 
eous God will send His messenger, Sraosha, and the 
heavenly hosts to the rescue. They will awaken 
the son of Vistaspa and consecrate the sacred fire 
and water together. They will then reestablish 
the kingdom of the faithful by destroying the rem- 
nants of the wicked and demolishing the heathen 
temples. The period of the wolf shall end; the 
period of the lamb shall begin. 

Hushedar Mah, the second son of Zoroaster, is 
to be the hero of the following thousand years. 
He is to fight against serpents and demons, and 
bring about a period of peace and progress. The 
science of medicine is to make such progress that 
men are to discover the means of becoming invul- 
nerable, and hunger will gradually diminish so 
that men may live without eating. But there is 
to be a lapse from faithfulness, and as a result 
Angra Mainyu (the Devil or Satan) so revives that 



72 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

he is able to unloose the dragon Azi Dahaka, who 
has been bound for a thousand years, and this mon- 
ster is directed by him to attack the true believers. 
A third of all living men are to be destroyed. The 
creation prays to Ahura Mazda for another hero. 
Thereupon God calls Keresaspa who slays the 
dragon. Discord and destruction begin to disap- 
pear, but the final triumph of good awaits the third 
and last millennium. 

This millennium is to be heralded by the birth 
of a virgin born hero. The holy maid (Eretate 
Fehdra), while bathing in the sacred waters of the 
lake Kasava is to conceive from the seed of the 
prophet Zoroaster, — which shall have been pre- 
served to that end by thousands of the spirits of 
the faithful. She is to bring forth a son called 
Saoshyant, which means Saviour. On the coming 
of this virgin-born hero the dead are to rise and body 
and spirit are to be reunited. All mountains and 
hills will melt and overflow the earth in a molten 
mass. This will utterly destroy the wicked but 
to the righteous it will be as warm milk. Then the 
final conflict between the powers of good and evil 
will result in the everlasting triumph of the former. 
Satan is to be bound by Ahura Mazda, and with 
all his angels the devil is to be cast down and de- 
stroyed in the molten mass. The angels of light 
and righteous men are then to enter into a state 
of everlasting perfection and joy. 

The Persian Apocalypse differs from the Jewish 
in that it makes use of distinctly Persian thoughts 



The Apocalypses Unmasked j$ 

and ideas as its material. In spite of the differences 
there is much in the foregoing that bears a resem- 
blance to passages in the Apocalypse of John. The 
references to earthquakes, famines, pestilences, 
signs in the sun and moon, wars, and calamities bear 
a resemblance to Apocalyptic passages in the Gos- 
pels. This seems to have been common material 
of Persian, Jewish and Christian Apocalypses. 
This additional factor they also have in common, 
that the deliverance of mankind instead of coming 
through moral effort, is to come wholly from above 
by the intervention of God Himself or Heaven-born 
heroes or Saviours assisted by angels and archangels. 
In all of this it differs radically both from the religion 
of the Hebrew prophets and that of the prophet 
Zoroaster. 

Ill 
In the book of Daniel there is one problem which 
deserves special consideration because it bears di- 
rectly upon our subsequent discussion of the Mes- 
siahship of Jesus. The crucial passage is as follows: 
"I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came 
with the clouds of heaven one like to a Man (liter- 
ally, Son of Man), and He came to the Aged One 
and was brought before Him, and there was given 
Him dominion and glory and sovereignty, that all the 
peoples, nations, and languages, should serve Him. 
His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall 
not pass away, and his sovereignty one that shall not 
be destroyed." l 

1 Daniel 7:13, 14. 



74 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

It is to be carefully noted that this "one like 
unto a Man" personifies the Jewish people to whom ■ 
the world empire is about to be given. This figure 
stands as the symbol for this empire just as the lion, 
the bear, etc., symbolize the ancient world empires 
that are to be done away. Just as in modern times 
the lion is taken as the symbol of Great Britain, 
the bear of Russia, and the eagle of the United 
States. This figure is not in any sense that of a 
Messiah any more than the statue of Liberty is the 
sovereign of the United States. The point of view 
of the author of Daniel is not monarchical but theo- • 
cratic. It is the priesthood at the head of the whole 
people which is to exercise world dominion, as the 
following verse shows: "And the sovereignty and 
the dominion and the greatness of the kingdom 
under the whole heaven shall surely be given to the 
people of the sons of the Most High. His sover- 
eignty (that is, God's, or what to the author was 
the equivalent, Israel's) is an everlasting sovereignty 
and all dominion shall serve and obey him. " ^J^* 

In this passage we have an expression of the na- 
tional "will to exploit." It is not so much the 
will of the hierarchy to exploit the Jewish people 
but the will of the Jewish people to exploit the rest 
of the world. This priestly practice has been ex- 
alted into a principle and has become the watch- 
word of the national program. There can be no 
doubt that some of the later Apocalyptic writers 
firmly believed that this career of exploitation was 
the^mission" which Jehovah intended His people to 



The Apocalypses Unmasked 75 

fulfil. The author of 4 Ezra (or 2 Esdras) expresses 
this expectation and at the same time utters a note 
of peevish impatience at the delay in the final con- 
summation. He writes: 

But we (the Jewish people) thy first born, thy beloved 

[most dear] 
If the world has indeed been created for our sakes why 

do we not enter into posession of our world? 1 

We are now in a position to judge of the theo- 
logical and ethical implications of the Apocalyptic 
ethic and theology. It was the negative of the 
prophetic — the logical continuation and develop- 
ment of the priestly. These facts must be clearly 
kept in mind in any endeavor to find a solution for 
the "eschatological problem" of the Synoptic 
Gospels. That is to say, the question as to how far 
Jesus incorporated in His teachings the Apocalyptic 
interpretation of life considered in the past, present 
and future. This matter will now engage our at- 
tention. 

x 4 Ezra, 6: 58. 



J 6 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 



CHAPTER VI 

THE THEOLOGY OF JESUS 

The modern endeavor to ascertain the real mes- 
sage of Jesus has proceeded in the main along the 
lines of literary criticism of the Gospels, together 
with a study of contemporary Judaism, and with 
the help of occasional "psychologizing" used in a 
rather amateurish way. A great deal of this work 
has proved of permanent value as an introduction, 
but much confusion remains to be cleared up. The 
best method of arriving at a clear solution must 
come through the study of the theological substruc- 
ture of Jesus' thought which hitherto has been 
surprisingly neglected. 

As the criticism of the Hexateuch produced a 
"documentary hypothesis," so has the study of the 
Synoptic problem. It is generally accepted that 
our Gospel of Mark is a primary source of the 
events in the life of Jesus which was employed as 
such by the Evangelists Matthew and Luke. The 
two latter also use a document containing the 
"Sayings" or fragments of discourses embodying 
teachings of Jesus. This document is sometimes 
called the "Logia" or, more briefly, "Q" (an abbre- 
viation originally employed by the German critic 
signifying Quelle or source ) . The Apocalyptic 
discourse of Mark 13 and its parallels in the other 
Synoptics is by some held to be another original 



The Theology of Jesus 77 

source. Some again hold this discourse to be the 
embodiment of genuine teachings of Jesus, while 
others consider it to have been an Apocalyptic 
oracle, pseudepigraphical (as were all such little 
Apocalypses of which many were in circulation) to 
which the Name of Jesus had been forged, but 
which was employed by all three Synoptic writers 
under the impression that it was a genuine oracle 
of their Master. The first and third Evangelists 
are credited with having combined historical set- 
tings taken from Mark with such an arrangement 
or combination of the " Sayings," as best suited 
their purpose. Moreover, each of these writers had 
his own particular viewpoint, or ''tendency," which 
influenced him in the adaptation which he made of 
his material. Prof. Burton of Chicago has a much 
more elaborate documentary hypothesis. He holds 
that there were at least four principal and several 
minor documents employed by the two later 
Evangelists. 1 

In the following discussion I accept the hypoth- 
esis that the three main sources were Mark, the 
Logia (Q), and the Apocalyptic "oracle of Jesus" 
which I hold to be pseudepigraphical. 

It has been almost universally held that Jesus 
was not a theologian. He did not employ the jargon 
of the schools whether rabbinical, or metaphysical 
(Hellenistic). From this fact it has been falsely 

1 "Some Principles of Literary Criticism and Their Applica- 
tion to the Synoptic Problem," University of Chicago Press, 
1904. 



78 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

inferred that His religion was non-theological. For 
example, Hegel failed to do justice to Jesus' 
thought because he could not regard Him as a 
profound philosopher. (This was presumably be- 
cause he could not find in His teachings any antici- 
pation of the Hegelian logic.) 

But since Bergson has rehabilitated the method 
of direct insight or spiritual intuition, perhaps a 
tardy recognition will be accorded, in philosophical 
circles, to the profundity of Jesus' metaphysical 
formulations. A like recognition is awaiting the 
philosophical value of the ethic of Jesus and its 
logical coherence. The theological teachings of our 
Lord naturally group themselves according to the 
scheme of the prophetic theology in the following 
order: (i) His teaching as to the value of the indi- 
vidual; (ii) His interpretation of history, or the 
developmental idea ; (iii) His universalism ; (iv) His 
teaching about God; (v) His teaching about the 
community or the Messianic idea. This last will be 
considered under the threefold aspects of (a) its 
prophetic quality; (b) the conception of the King- 
dom; and (c) the means of its inauguration. This, 
in turn, will lead to a critical discussion of the 
eschatological problem to which a separate chapter 
will be devoted. This, in turn, will be followed by 
a chapter on Jesus as the Prophet- Messiah, with a 
special reference to the Messianic ethic. 

The affinity of Jesus with the prophetic theology 
and His antagonism to the theology and ethic of 
the priestly cult will be frequently noted. 



The Theology of Jesus 79 

I 

The teaching of Jesus about the value of the 
individual is a striking extension of the prophetic 
idea and a contrast to that of His contemporaries, 
the scribes. The former discovered that God needs 
men, that He depends upon them, and that the 
reign of God on earth has the highest welfare of 
mankind as a leading object. The individual stands 
out from the tribal community. The scribes held 
that only certain men (and very few) had a value in 
the sight of God. The Gentiles had none. The 
Samaritans perhaps had less. Not even all Jews 
had value — only the few who belonged to the 
priestly caste, or who, like the Pharisees, strictly 
observed the law. The Galileans, as well as the 
publicans, the harlots and the uncircumcised were 
considered ceremonially, if not also morally, impure 
and loathsome in the sight of God. 

The only type of men against whom Jesus turned 
the shafts of His indignant scorn were those who 
were scornful of others, namely, the scribes, the 
Pharisees, and the priests of the temple. Against 
these He contended for the supreme value of the 
individual man as man, and this thought was to 
find its embodiment in the ideal community. 

The value of the individual begins in earliest 
childhood. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
The old must return to the simple, childlike atti- 
tude before they can enter the kingdom. 1 

1 Mk. 10: 14, 15, Mt. 18: 3; 19: 13, Lk. 18: 16. 



80 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

To receive a child is to receive the Great Teacher 
Himself. 1 As for the individual who may injure a 
child it would have been better for him never to 
have been born. 2 To give a drink of water to a 
thirsty child is to merit an everlasting reward. 3 The 
children possess an original righteousness. Those 
who repent, in so doing, return to the childlike 
relationship with God. 

Even those whom the spiritual aristocrats despise 
have an infinite value. The Samaritan may be a 
neighbor more truly than priest or Levite, if he 
loves his neighbor as himself. God feels that love 
directed toward one's neighbor is equivalent to love 
directed toward God Himself. The despised beggar 
filled with sores, regarded as a cause of ceremonial 
defilement, goes at his death to enjoy loving inti- 
macy with Abraham, while the rich man who 
despised and treated him as an inferior is, perhaps 
on that very account, an outcast from the society 
of the blessed. 

Jesus recognizes in the Gentile centurion such 
faith as He had not found in Israel. The widow of 
Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian received a 
greater mark of God's favor than the widows and 
lepers of Israel. The publicans and harlots go into 
the Kingdom of God before the scribes and Phari- 
sees. There is rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner 
that repenteth. God protects the sparrows, clothes 



*Mk. 9:37, 41; Lk. 9:48. 

2 Mt. 18:6, 10; Mk. 9:42. 
3 Mt. 10:42. 



The Theology of Jesus 81 

the lilies, feeds the birds. But they are nothing in 
comparison with His loving care for men. So great 
is God's interest in His children that He numbers 
even the hairs of their heads. To succor the needy, 
the sick, the imprisoned, is to minister to the Judge 
of all the earth Himself. 

The world's standard of value is reversed. Many 
that are last shall be first, and the first last, in the 
Kingdom of God. 

The contemporaries of Jesus regarded Israel alone 
as "God's elect," "His Son," "His Beloved," "His 
Only-Begotten." They did not apply any of these 
titles to persons but only to the personified " Chosen 
People." Jesus, on the other hand, regarded indi- 
viduals as the children of God. 

The problem of the significance of Jesus' use of 
the phrase "Son of Man" finds its key in the dis- 
covery of the lofty regard with which He considered 
the individual man as man. In the theology of 
Jesus such high claims are made for man as the 
child and spokesman of God that many of the say- 
ings which He applies to man in general are by his 
later adherents held to apply only to Himself as 
Messiah. This contrasts with the point of view 
both in the Old Testament and in the mouths of 
Jesus' contemporaries. The Greek nlds rod dv dpooirov 
is the translation of the Aramaic "Bar-nasha" 
which is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew "Ben- 
Adam." In the Old Testament the phrase is applied 
to mankind in general, as opposed to God, or to 
the Gentiles as opposed to the elect people, the 



82 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

Jews. For example, we read in Numbers 23: 19 
"God is not a man that He should lie, neither the 
Son of Man that He should repent," and in Deuter- 
onomy 32: 18 (R. V.) the children of men are con- 
trasted with the children of Israel. 1 

In the Psalms the phrase is commonly used to 
emphasize the contrast of mortal, impotent, tran- 
sient man, as against an Omnipotent, Eternal God. 2 
In two passages the phrase "Children of Men" is 
used as a synonym for mankind. In fact, its most 
usual sense is that of "mankind," "the human 
race," and is a title of humility or inferiority. In 
the mouth of Jesus the word is always a title of 
dignity. 

But there is another sense, perhaps colloquial, in 
which the phrase occurs as a substitute for the per- 
sonal pronoun, both for the first and second persons 
singular. In the latter sense the phrase "Son of 
Man" occurs eighty-nine times in the writings of 
Ezekiel always as the form of address applied to the 
prophet by Jehovah. "The term 'Ben-Adam,' ' 
says Prof. Hirsch, "is merely a cumbersome and 
formal substitute for the personal pronoun; such 
substitution being due, perhaps, to the influence of 
Assy ro- Babylonian usage." The usage in Aramaic 
is similar and is also found in Syriac, Mardiac, 
Talmudic, and other dialects. 

1 See Article "Son of Man" by E. H. Hirsch, University of 
Chicago, Professor of Rabbinical Literature, — Jewish Encyclo- 
pedia, vol. 11, p. 461. 

*Ps.8:4(A.V. 5)— 11:4— 33:13- 



The Theology of Jesus 83 

The use of the phrase as applied to man and also 
as a substitute for the first personal pronoun con- 
stantly recurs in the sayings of Jesus. It is possible 
that He used it in a third sense also as symbolic 
of God's Kingdom. (Mt. 10: 23.) 

The Jew in the time of Christ did not share Jesus' 
exalted view of humanity. He took the Old Testa- 
ment point of view expressed in the book of Job — 
"The son of man which is a worm," l and heeded 
the warning of the Psalmist, "Put not your trust in 
the son of man." 2 So novel and startling was 
Jesus' exalted view of the divine significance of 
simple man that His utterances about him fell upon 
the ears of the Pharisees as blasphemy. Yet many 
of these utterances are little more than a develop- 
ment of the thought found in the prophets. Com- 
pare the declaration of Jesus " Man is greater than 
the temple," 3 with the prophetic utterance "I 
desire mercy and not sacrifice" 4 paraphrased by 
Jesus in the words "Mercy is greater than sacri- 
fice." 5 The sentiment in each case is the same, 
that it is greater in God's sight to minister to man- 
kind than to concern oneself with the acts of the 
temple cultus. The same idea is developed still 
further in the statement "Man is lord even of the 
Sabbath." 6 This claim was on a par with the state- 

1 Job 25:6. 2 Ps. 143. 

3 Mt. 12: 6 (R. V.) margin. 

4 Hosea 6 : 6. 

5 Mt. 12: 17. 

6 Mt. 12:8; Mk. 2:28. 



84 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

ment that under certain circumstances a man could 
forgive the sins of another. 1 Of course, all men 
have not only the right but also the duty to forgive 
others who have sinned against them. It is only by 
so doing that they can consistently ask for God's 
forgiveness, but beyond that any man who has 
consciously entered into the Kingdom, that is, come 
into co-operating relationship with the Father, may 
speak words of absolution to a penitent, who, like 
the paralytic, is bound and held in the chain of his 
sins. But these various statements made by our 
Lord to apply to the spiritually enlightened man in 
general were by His later interpreters restricted in 
their application to Jesus Himself as the Messiah. 
This tendency begins in the Gospels, 2 and reaches 
its climax in the opinion that the use of the phrase 
"Son of Man" by Jesus applied only to Himself in 
the Messianic sense. 

Among modern interpreters of the thought of 
Jesus as to the value of the least and lowliest of the 
sons of men none has more clearly grasped or co- 
gently stated the true doctrine of the worth of the 
individual than Prof. Howison in his essay on "The 
Right Relation of Reason to Religion." 3 

Howison appreciates this teaching both on its 
negative and constructive side, as destroying the 
method of authority (that of the scribal and Phari- 

iMk. 2:5 f. 

*Cf. Mt. 12:8, Lk. 6:5. 

3 "Limits of Evolution and Other Essays," p. 217 f, especially 
pp. 241-260. 



The Theology of Jesus 85 

saic ecclesiasticism, which "shut up the Kingdom 
of Heaven against men") and, presenting the revo- 
lutionary proclamation of the relation between God 
and man as an eternal solidarity of God and man 
in the community life of the kingdom. 

The earlier interpreters of Jesus grasped the fact 
that He claimed for Himself personally such a 
solidarity with God, but they restricted the appli- 
cation of the same claim which Jesus made for all 
mankind to Himself as the unique Son of God. 
Jesus' doctrine was that of the potential, nay, the 
essential solidarity of God and the human race. 
His interpreters limited the doctrine so that it 
should teach the exclusive solidarity of Jesus with 
God. Jesus' doctrine is thus set forth by Howison: 

This novel, unprecedented and astounding doctrine of 
a universal, moral equality as the aim of all spiritual 
being, an equality which is to embrace all minds in a 
complete union with the Mind of God, and from which 
all external authority is to be excluded, Jesus, by the 
plainest implication sets forth as the object and goal of 
all spiritual effort. 1 

In this conception of the religious relations of souls to 
God and to each other, Christ has parted company with 
all the piety that had gone before Him, and to such a 
degree as had never in the older world been paralleled. 2 

1 Op. cit. p. 250. 

2 Howison fails to do justice to the prophetic doctrine of the 
value of the individual. As we have seen Jesus' doctrine was 
but an enlargement of the prophetic. Howison is right in calling 
that doctrine revolutionary, but it was not new except in rela- 
tion to the priestly view of His contemporaries. 



86 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

His theistic step was not simply new, it was absolutely 
revolutionary. His point of view of the literal divine 
sonship of every lowliest and most sinful and sinning 
spirit, committed Him logically to the assertion of the 
implicit equality of all spirits with each other, so far as 
concerns their moral powers and destinations, no matter 
what their actual and contingent state; and also of their 
potential equality with God. 1 

Howison realizes that the monarchical view of God 
as a "sovereign" is replaced by the doctrine of the 
Divine Fatherhood. 

To break away from this magisterial and monarchical 
conception of God which left men nothing but the sub- 
missive subjects of a Lord, Whose sovereign Will ordained 
all things, even the supreme distinction between what is 
right and what is wrong, was indeed a great and unprec- 
edented step. But Jesus took it. Instead of Majesty 
and a Lord, He presents God as the Friend and moral 
Father of men, Who calls every human 'being, every 
spirit, to the equality of sharing in that fulness of spiritual 
powers which constitutes the Divine glory. 

The aim of such a religion is not merely to "glorify 
God"; rather it is to glorify all souls, as all in the image 
of God ; to glorify them by fulfilling for every one of them 
its vocation to repeat in a new way the life of universal 
love that is the life of God, and thus to attain through 
the universal greatening, such a real glorification of God 
as other forms of religion seek after in vain. The God 
of Christ is indeed (Himself) One Who comes "not to be 
ministered unto but to minister," and Who illuminates 
in His Own Person the great and characteristic truth 

1 Op. cit. p. 251. 



The Theology of Jesus 87 

spoken by Jesus, "He that findeth his life shall lose it, 
and he that loseth his life shall find it." 1 

According to the teachings of the prophets and 
of Jesus the Cause of God Himself is thwarted so 
long as the least and lowliest are kept from the 
opportunities of growth and expansion. The indi- 
vidual does not come unto his own till he discovers 
God's need of him as co-founder of the Messianic 
Kingdom. 

This leads us to the consideration of the vital 
question as to how Jesus regarded the quest for 
personal salvation. This was the object which was 
diligently sought by the Pharisee through the 
method of legalism and ceremonialism. Not only 
does Jesus declare this method unavailing but pro- 
claims that the quest for personal salvation in 
itself is unavailing and self-defeating. This quest 
is based on the assumption that God is unwilling 
and reluctant to impart the gift of salvation to 
individual men and that they must therefore find 
some means of persuading Him to grant it. Ac- 
cording to Jesus' teaching God does not require 
any such persuasion. He is already seeking the 
lost. The lost should not be seeking themselves 
and their own salvation but should be seeking God 
and His righteousness, that is, the triumph of His 
righteous Cause, His reign in the universal com- 
munity. Thus by forgetting the desire for personal 
salvation and seeking the universal salvation the 

x Op. cit. p. 252, f. 



88 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

individual finds himself in the blessed company of 
the saved. He who treats men as though they were 
mere instruments to minister to his own superior 
comfort and well-being is seeking his own welfare 
at the expense of other men or the community. He 
is sinning against the value of the individual and 
so of mankind. Because of the value of the indi- 
vidual in God's sight this exploiting of men is the 
supreme sin which cuts them off automatically from 
the Kingdom of God. Hence the difficulty of the 
rich, — for wealth is regarded as the outcome of ex- 
ploitation, — in entering into the Kingdom of God. 
They can only do it by renouncing the fruits of 
their exploitation. They must lose the safety which 
their wealth guarantees them in order to find their 
salvation in the community where all are saved. 

II 

The close affinity already recognized between the 
thought of Jesus and that of the prophets creates a 
presumption in favor of the view that He shared 
the prophetic valuation of history. In such of 
His sayings as have been preserved to us there are 
few direct allusions to this conception. The pas- 
sage, perhaps, which comes nearest to revealing the 
prophetic conception of history is that wherein He 
refers to John the Baptist and the prophets of the 
past as having been already members of the King- 
dom of God. 1 

1 See below, p. 128. 



The Theology of Jesus 89 

The essence of the prophetic philosophy of his- 
tory lay in the developmental idea and this thought 
is clearly set forth in undoubted Q passages in the 
parables of the seed growing secretly, the mustard 
seed, and the leaven. 

In spite of this the modern eschatologists teach 
that Jesus held the Apocalyptic catastrophic view 
of world history and the coming of the Kingdom 
of God. Be it noted, however, that the least 
convincing portions of the work of Johannes Weiss 
and Schweitzer are those in which they seek to 
eliminate the developmental idea from these para- 
bles. 

Moreover, the doctrine of the immanence of God 
clearly implies His Presence in the world. The 
teaching that God feeds the birds, and numbers the 
hairs of the heads of His children, the teaching that 
the children are already members of the Kingdom, 
are based upon the idea of God as present in the 
world. 

If His Presence be shown in these small mat- 
ters, how much more must His guidance be man- 
ifested in the weightier matters of great historic 
movements. This view will be further confirmed 
and established if it be shown that the ethics of 
Jesus contemplated the bringing in of the future 
historic changes implied in the coming of the King- 
dom by moral processes and not by a gigantic 
miracle. This matter will receive more extensive 
treatment in the next chapter. 



90 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

III 

The prophetic universalism was an organic part 
of the prophetic interpretation of history. It linked 
up the development of the non-Jewish races with 
God's plan for the salvation of the Jews and that 
of the Jews with the ultimate salvation of mankind. 
It is not difficult to show that as opposed to the 
particularism of the priestly-apocalyptic theology 
Jesus made the prophetic universalism His Own. 
This still further strengthens the argument in favor 
of Jesus holding to the prophetic interpretation of 
history. Certain critics are found to deny that 
universalism was inherent in the teachings of Jesus. 
The eschatologists must naturally deny it as incon- 
sistent w T ith the Apocalyptic particularistic world 
view. The Apocalypses were, in Harnack's phrase, 
"more intent on the downfall than on the conver- 
sion of the heathen." Among the passages which 
these critics urge in support of their view are the 
words of Jesus to the Syro- Phoenician woman espe- 
cially as reported in Matthew's version which con- 
tains the words "I am not sent save unto the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel." Another passage is 
that in the commission to the Twelve telling them 
not to go into any city of the Samaritans or Gen- 
tiles (again, according to Matthew's version). But 
the chief ground of their contention is the inference 
from the exclusive character of the Church in Jeru- 
salem where the immediate followers of the Lord 
were in control, that this exclusiveness must have 
been based upon some teaching of His. 



The Theology of Jesus 91 

We find, however, that the passages which seem 
to restrict the Lord's mission to the Jews occur in 
St. Matthew's Gospel alone. And it is recognized 
that this is a distinctively Jewish Gospel whose 
author has the tendency to "rabbinize" the teach- 
ings of Jesus wherever the opportunity offers. This 
tendency seems to be lacking in the Q version. In 
this document we have the account of the healing 
of the centurion's servant. On entering into Caper- 
naum a centurion in the Roman army asks the 
Teacher to heal his servant who is sick of the palsy. 
Jesus says forthwith "I will come and heal him." 
This eagerness to help is in striking contrast to 
the hesitation He is reported to have shown in 
regard to the Syro- Phoenician woman, which is 
placed on the ground that the children must be fed 
before the dogs and that He is sent only to the Jews. 
Moreover, the centurion's faith is selected for com- 
mendation as greater than any faith which the 
Master has found in Israel. This He would have 
been reluctant to admit if He had held to the nar- 
row particularism ascribed to Him by the eschatol- 
ogists. 

The difference of treatment accorded the Syro- 
Phoenician woman must not therefore be referred 
to a question of principle but to the general circum- 
stances. It is important to note that Mark states 
that Jesus wished no man to know of His Presence 
in the town. Doubtless His tired nerves demanded 
rest. Perhaps it was in quest of such a period of 
rest that He went into the borders of Tyre and 



92 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

Sidon. Matthew tells us that the woman made a 
scene, so much so that she rasped the nerves of 
even the disciples. Does not this combination of 
circumstances, — Jesus' weariness and desire to be 
unmolested and the hysterical importunity of the 
woman — explain Jesus' reluctance to make Him- 
self known through a miracle of healing, rather than 
the statement attributed to Him by Matthew, 
which Mark's earlier Gospel omits, "I was not 
sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel"? 
If Jesus had refused to help the woman as a matter 
of principle He would not have been moved merely 
by her importunity. But He not only acceded to 
her request — but, according to Mark, He com- 
mended her humility. We may note in this con- 
nection that in the report of the commission to the 
Twelve the injunction not to go into any city of 
the Samaritans or of the Gentiles does not occur in 
St. Mark or in Q. 

Such testimony as is advanced against the uni- 
versalism of Jesus is overwhelmed by the positive 
testimony in its favor. It is in harmony with the 
affinity between His teaching and that of the proph- 
ets. It is in harmony with the teaching of John 
the Baptist which Jesus commended. John rebuked 
the particularism of the Jews and their pride in 
descent from Abraham by declaring that God could 
make new children of Abraham out of the stones. 
' ' And think not to say within yourselves : ' we have 
Abraham for our father'; for I say unto you that 
God is able of these stones to raise up children unto 



The Theology of Jesus 93 

Abraham." This is a Q passage, as is also the state- 
ment of Jesus embodying the same universalism : 
"I say unto you: they shall come from the east 
and the west, and shall sit at meat with Abraham 
and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God: but 
the sons of the kingdom (that is, the Jews) shall be 
cast out." 

In later sources we have the parables of the Last 
Judgment, wherein no distinction is made between 
Jew and Gentile, in the dividing of the sheep and the 
goats. This is all the stronger testimony to the 
universalism of Jesus because it is embodied in 
Matthew's Gospel whose final editor was a " par- 
ticularism" 

Whereas the first Evangelist was, as we have 
said, a particularist, the third was a Hellenist. The 
Hellenistic Jews had been liberalized by their con- 
tact with the Greek world and that predisposed 
them in favor of universalism. It was therefore 
natural that Luke should give prominence to 
any traces of universalism in his sources about the 
teaching of Jesus, and as natural that the first 
Evangelist should omit them. In Luke's version 
of the visit to Nazareth His hearers are at first 
shown as admiring the gracious words which He 
spoke. They ask "Is not this Joseph's son?" But 
their antagonism does not develop till He has given 
utterance to the universalistic thought in pointing 
out God's favor to the Gentiles, the widow of Zare- 
phath, and Naaman the Syrian. It is immediately 
following these words that they take offense and 



94 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

threaten Him with violence. In Matthew's ver- 
sion we are told simply that His hearers were 
astonished at His doctrine and wisdom, but they 
took offense because He was the carpenter's son and 
the other members of His family were familiar 
acquaintances. According to this version they 
seemed to resent the prophetic claim of one of such 
humble origin. The universalistic element is there- 
by suppressed. The universalistic parable of the 
good Samaritan is given at length by Luke with its 
implication of the superiority of the Samaritan to 
the priest and Levite and quite naturally is omitted 
entirely by the first Evangelist. In spite of the 
particularism of the Jerusalem Church the univer- 
salism of Jesus may be clearly established from 
our records, and those critics err who hold that the 
universalism which ultimately triumphed in early 
Christianity was the result not of the teaching of 
the Founder but of the Apostle Paul. 

IV 

Nothing is clearer than the fact that Jesus 
rejected the priestly Apocalyptic theological idea 
of a God Who is remote from the world, or Who 
required to be kept in a favorable mood by sacri- 
fices, or Who cared more about ceremonial right- 
eousness than about mercy, justice and truth. 
Jesus' constant allusion to God as the loving Father 
desiring the welfare of "the least, the lowliest and 
the lost" is universally recognized and it should 
further be recognized that herein He simply extends 



The Theology of Jesus 95 

the prophetic idea of God as the Lover of the 
common people, and contradicts the priestly idea 
of a God haughty, remote, capricious, and danger- 
ous. In His teaching about prayer Jesus portrays 
the loving communion of a person with a person 
which had its prototype in the ancient prayer-life 
of the patriarchs in the desert. The profundity of 
the teaching of Jesus should not be underestimated 
because its marvelous crystal clearness enables one 
to see to its very depths. 

V 

Jesus' teaching as to the future of the world 
community has the closest connection with the 
prophetic doctrine on that subject. We will post- 
pone a consideration of how He regarded His Own 
particular relation to the coming of the Kingdom 
till Chapter VIII. For the present we will antici- 
pate the results there set forth with the statement 
that Jesus identified Himself with the prophetic 
Inaugurator of the Kingdom, the suffering Messiah 
of the Great Unknown. 

We will now consider the social aspects of the 
Kingdom of God taken as the community of 
mankind organized for the benefit of all according 
to the Divine program. 

There is one point on which the modern escha- 
tologists and their opponents may cheerfully agree: 
Jesus expected the existing social order to pass 
away and be superseded by another. The differ- 
ence between the two modern schools of thought 



96 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

lies in their interpretation of the manner in which 
He considered that this revolutionary change was 
to be brought about. As we know, the eschatolo- 
gists hold that He expected it to come about by 
the external descent of the miraculously organized 
Kingdom of Heaven from above; that He held that 
it was to be imposed from without by armies of 
angels who would first demolish the existing world 
order. This event would occur so soon as the 
transcendent God should select the time to give 
the matter His attention. The primary object of 
the Apocalyptic ethic was to secure to the devout 
Jew a place on the winning side of the hosts of 
Heaven and at the same time to force the hand of 
God Who had made a covenant with His people, 
wherein He agreed to send them the Kingdom when 
they should succeed in sufficiently fulfilling the 
difficult task of discharging their side of the con- 
tract, as stipulated in the elaborate requirements 
of the Torah. This ethic was based upon the quest 
for a separate personal salvation and the means 
employed were those of a Pharisaic scrupulosity of 
ceremonial observance especially in regard to the 
Sabbath. The Torah thus became a very compli- 
cated magic formula consisting not only of words 
but of ritualistic acts which had to be observed 
every waking hour. This kind of ethic had no 
organic or logical connection with the end to be 
obtained, and hence may be rightly called an in- 
terim-ethic, — one that is to be done away when it 
has fulfilled its object — and the modern eschatolo- 



The Theology of Jesus 97 

gists hold that the ethic of Jesus was of this variety. 
The adherents of the non-eschatological view hold 
that the ethic of Jesus was not intended to force or 
to persuade God to act but was intended to lead to 
a type of conduct which would spontaneously 
inaugurate the rule of God in the affairs of men 
through a moral, logical and developmental proc- 
ess, through adherence of mankind to the Divine 
law revealed by the prophets. 

In support of their view the eschatologists point 
out the fact that the ethical teachings of Jesus are 
not practicable in the present world order. Prof. 
K. Lake, while recognizing the difficulty of apply- 
ing the ethic of Jesus to modern conditions of 
life, nevertheless holds, in contrast to Weiss and 
Schweitzer, that the ethic of early Christianity was 
absolute and not conditional. In contrast to the 
statement of Schweitzer "The ethic of Jesus . . . 
is conditional in the sense that it stands in indissol- 
uble connection with the expectation of perfection 
which is to be supernaturally brought about," l 
and the further statement — "If ethics has to do 
only with the expectation of the supernatural con- 
summation, its actual worth is diminished, since it 
is merely individual ethics and is concerned only 
with the relation of each single person to the King- 
dom of God;" 2 Lake writes: "The Sermon on the 
Mount, which may be taken as a typical example 
of Christian ethics, is not a code which can be 

1 "The Mystery of the Kingdom of God," p. 100. 

2 Op. cit. p. 103. 



98 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

applied directly and simply to our ordinary daily 
life. It is impossible not to resist evil, it is unde- 
sirable to lend, distrusting no man, and it is ruinous 
to give to every one who asks. We cannot base a 
code of conduct on the literal observance of the 
Sermon on the Mount, if society is to continue and 
human nature remain as it is. That is exactly the 
point; early Christianity assumed that society was 
not going to continue, and that human nature was 
to be changed. With that assumption Christians 
were in a position to see and to appreciate the 
absolute principles of life at its highest. The 
effect of their eschatological belief was that they 
were enabled to see ethical problems in isolation — 
in an unnatural isolation if you like — and to reach 
nearer to reality than they could ever otherwise 
have done." x 

The fallacy in Prof. Lake's argument lies hidden 
in the following statement: " Early Christianity 
assumed that society was not going to continue, 
and that human nature was to be changed." The 
teaching of Jesus was distinguished from that of 
His early followers in the belief not "that society 
was not going to continue," but that society was 
not to continue as it is now organized. Human 
nature was to be indeed changed but by a moral 
process starting with repentance and not by a 
miracle. Human nature was not to be super- 
naturally transformed into some other kind of 
nature, but human nature was to become what it 

^irsopp Lake, "Early Epistles of St. Paul," p. 443. 



The Theology of Jesus 99 

was divinely intended to be — was to become true to 
its deeper self by recognizing its kinship with the 
divine. Human nature when it had found itself 
through repentance was to reorganize the social 
order on a different basis. In place of the natural 
pagan principle of selfishness and exploitation, 
society was to be reorganized on the principle of 
universal, loving service. In place of might, right 
was to be enthroned. 

Jesus did not expect that His ethic would render 
its adherents "successful men" in the existing 
order. He did not expect them to grow rich by 
lending to every one that asked. 

He expected them, if He did not require them, 
to be poor. But even so the poor are blessed, for 
the whole realm of God is theirs. 1 He did not expect 
that the policy of non-resistance would protect His 
adherents absolutely from aggression, but He be- 
lieved that (perhaps, on the principle that it "takes 
two to make a quarrel"), in the face of persistent 
non-resistance, or, better, passive resistance, the 
aggressor would grow ashamed and desist. But 
however much the adherents of the Kingdom should 
suffer persecution, loss of property, or even of life 
they were to remember what happened to the 
prophets, the true exponents of the Kingdom of God, 
and were accordingly to rejoice to be found worthy, 
in fulfilling the prophet's task, to share also in the 
prophet's fate. At length the era will come when 
the mourners shall laugh ; the meek will yet inherit 

x Lk. 6:20. 



too Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

the earth ; for the old order changeth and the present 
rich will lose their temporary relative advantage. 
But not in this will their misfortune consist, but 
rather in the absence on their part of a true appre- 
ciation of the Kingdom. They have become rich 
through violating the principles of the Kingdom. 
Therefore, in the revolution that is to come they 
who are now first will be the last because of the 
inferior quality of their social morality. 

The ethic of Jesus can be fully understood only 
in relation to the renovated moral and social order 
which it is the immediate object of that ethic to 
inaugurate. 

The social, revolutionary character of Jesus' ethic 
compared with that of His contemporaries is brought 
out in the following passage taken from the writings 
of O. Holtzmann: "In contrast to fastings, Sab- 
bath observance, purification, sacrifice, and public 
prayers, Jesus constantly emphasizes that wherein 
He finds value for the social life of mankind. He 
always puts the social virtues above the most 
scrupulous observance of the ritualistic prescrip- 
tions. Accordingly, He derives the individual 
duties, not as the preaching of the scribes was 
accustomed, from that which was written in the 
law, but from the underlying thought of a social 
organization of mankind, in which mercy, justice, 
fidelity, and conciliation are supreme." l 

Herein we have the fullest development of the 

1 0. Holtzmann in his "Jesus Christus und das Gemein- 
schaftsleben der Menschen" p. 22. 



The Theology of Jesus 101 

prophetic conception of the Messianic era and the 
direct contrast to the Apocalyptic conception. This 
brings us to the more detailed consideration of the 
eschatological problem which is to form the sub- 
ject matter of the following Chapter. 



102 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 



CHAPTER VII 
"the eschatological problem" 

In studying the ethical and theological teach- 
ings of Jesus we have been at the same time dealing 
with the eschatological problem from the philo- 
sophical and psychological point of view. We have 
seen that His Theology and ethic is as essentially 
opposed to the Apocalyptic as the theology and 
ethic of the prophet was opposed to that of the 
priest. Moreover, the thought of Jesus about 
the Kingdom is a complete organic whole without 
the introduction of the catastrophic consumma- 
tion. In fact, that idea is not only superfluous but 
it weakens, if it does not contradict, His theological 
and ethical position. If God be immanent and the 
Kingdom be in process of growth and develop- 
ment, a cataclysmic interruption would annul the 
value of the whole moral process. By the inclusion 
of the Apocalyptic expectation Jesus would have un- 
dermined the absolute authority of His Own ethic. 
It would of necessity become, as the eschatologists 
consistently hold that it is, merely a purely theoret- 
ical or interim ethic. 

If an apologist should hold that, as history pro- 
ceeds not only by a slow process of development, 
but also by means of sudden catastrophes, Jesus, in 
recognizing that fact, would but logically hold the 
Apocalyptic view, it would only be necessary to say 



14 The Eschatological Problem" 103 

in reply that the cataclysms that the historian rec- 
ognizes are of a different kind from those conceived of 
by the Apocalyptic. The former are revolutions 
or crises growing directly out of the developmental 
process itself, and their place is recognized in the 
prophetic interpretation of history, whereas the 
Apocalyptic intervention of God was conceived of as 
a miraculous and magical break in the historic 
process on a stupendous scale. To hold as some 
do, among them Harnack, that Jesus made a syn- 
thesis of these two divergent views, is to accuse 
Him of being a shallow eclectic. 

Hard as it is to conceive how Jesus could have 
made a synthesis of these two antagonistic cosmic 
views, it is extremely easy to understand how His 
immediate followers might have been led to do so. 
We now turn to the study of the literary problem 
for further light upon this very question. If the 
teachings of Jesus were essentially anti-Apocalyp- 
tic, we should expect to find some traces of it in our 
text, as indeed we do find them. 

If the Apocalytic scheme of things were wholly 
foisted on to the teachings of Jesus we must explain 
the processes — logical or psychological — whereby 
this was accomplished. We should also inquire 
what element in the teaching of Jesus would most 
readily yield itself as an opening for the intrusion 
of the Apocalyptic idea. Furthermore, if the 
Apocalyptic view was thus grafted into the teach- 
ing of Jesus, we should expect to find marks of this 
process in our Gospels. This would be apt to show 



104 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

itself in two ways — by the extensive interpolations 
into the sayings of Jesus of unauthentic matter, 
and, by the placing upon authentic sayings an 
Apocalyptic interpretation wholly absent from the 
thought of Jesus. 

I 

It is needless to enumerate again the points of 
antagonism between the theology and ethic of 
Jesus and that of the Pharisees and other adherents 
of the Apocalypses. We are concerned now with 
the literary evidences of specific anti-Apocalyptic 
statements. 

The most striking illustration of the specific 
opposition of Jesus to the whole Apocalyptic mech- 
anism is found in His condemnation of their quest 
for "signs" which were to be interpreted as fore- 
boding the nearness of the coming Kingdom. In 
Daniel and in the Apocalypses generally, certain 
arbitrary signs are given. In the Book of Daniel 
such signs are found in the covert allusions to 
Antiochus Epiphanes, the interpretation of Jere- 
miah's seventy years of the captivity as seventy- 
year weeks, the "time, times and half a time," the 
"abomination that maketh desolate," are illustra- 
tions of the kind of signs sought for. There was 
no moral value or significance underlying or con- 
nected with these signs. They were of no greater 
value than the signs of most popular superstitions. 

In the Synoptics we have very direct condemna- 
tion of this quest for external signs on the part of 



" The Eschatological Problem" 105 

Jesus. In Mark 8:11-12, we read "Now the 
Pharisees came out and started to argue with Him 
asking Him a sign from heaven by way of tempting 
Him. But He sighed in spirit and said, 

Why does this generation seek a sign? 

I tell you truly, no sign shall be given this generation. 

The form of expression "a sign from heaven" 
suggests that the Pharisees were asking for a special 
miracle but this idea falls away in the Q text which 
gives evidence of being the original form. Accord- 
ing to this the Pharisees simply said, "We would 
seek from thee a sign. " l According to Mark's 
version Jesus simply denied that the kind of sign 
sought would be given that generation. In the Q 
version, while refusing to give an arbitrary or exter- 
nal sign, Jesus offers them a sign with a deep moral 
significance, namely, that of repentance, in the 
"sign of Jonah." "But He said, an evil and 
adulterous generation seeketh after a sign and a 
sign shall not be given it except the sign of Jonah. 
. . . The men of Nineveh shall stand up in judg- 
ment of this generation, because they repented at 
the preaching of Jonah, and behold here is more 
than Jonah." 2 

In Matthew 16: 4, we have the rendering, 

It is an evil and disloyal generation that craves a sign, 
And no sign shall be given it except the sign of Jonah. 3 

1 Harnack, "Sayings of Jesus," p. 266, Sec. 30. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Moffat's version, with footnote, p. 22. 



106 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

In Matthew's rendering we have a combination of 
the Markan version with the allusion to the 
(moral) "sign of Jonah" in Q. According to Har- 
nack, Q inserts "For as Jonah became a sign to 
the Ninevites so shall the Son of Man be to this 
generation." The moral significance of the sign 
is here retained because Jesus compares Himself 
with Jonah as being an even greater preacher of 
repentance. But in Luke's version and also in that 
of Matthew, there is a tendency to make Jesus Him- 
self a sign in the non-moral sense — just such a sign 
as Jesus said would not be given to that generation. 
Instead of comparing Himself with Jonah as a 
preacher of repentance, Jonah's sojourn for three 
days and three nights in the belly of the whale (an 
external non-moral sign) is compared to Jesus' 
three days and three nights spent in "the heart of 
the earth." 1 But the original meaning of Jesus is 
perfectly clear. The evil and adulterous (or dis- 
loyal) generation is guilty of inconsistency and 
folly. While neglecting to conform its life to God's 
Will through repentance it is yet looking for exter- 
nal signs of the miraculous coming of God. In- 
stead of looking without it should look within and 
reform its character and conduct. Instead of look- 
ing for the Kingdom of God coming in the clouds 
it should follow the example of Nineveh, the Gen- 
tile city, and repent. The Gentile city of old shall 
stand up in the judgment to condemn the holy city 

1 Matt. 12: 40, 



11 The Eschatological Problem " 107 

of the Jews, for Jerusalem refuses to repent at the 
preaching of a greater prophet than Jonah. 

In Q we have the developmental idea of the 
Kingdom as a moral leavening and as a growth in 
the parables of the leaven and the mustard seed. 
In Q and Mark we have this anti- Apocalyptic 
polemic directed against the external sign of the 
coming of a ready-made kingdom. This fact re- 
moves any difficulty in the way of accepting the 
anti-Apocalyptic and developmental statement 
found in Luke 17:20. "On being asked by the 
Pharisees when the reign of God was coming, he 
answered them, The reign of God is not coming as 
you hope to catch sight of it. No one will say 
'Here it is' or 'There it is,' for the reign of God is 
now in your midst." l 

The survival of these distinct anti-Apocalyptic 
statements in Gospels which had been edited by 
those who had adopted the Apocalyptic views, is 
the strongest argument in favor of the conscious 
opposition of Jesus to the eschatology of the Apoca- 
lypses. 

II 

If, as we are now prepared to assert, the Apoca- 
lyptic scheme of things were wholly foisted on to 
the teachings of Jesus, we must now inquire by 
what processes — logical or psychological — this re- 
versal of His thought could have been accomplished. 
For not only did His earliest followers, who had 

1 Moffat's version. 



108 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

known Him personally in life, in the years immedi- 
ately following His death accept and teach the 
Apocalyptic expectation, but connected Jesus Him- 
self with the coming Kingdom as its central, super- 
natural, Messianic Figure, Who was to come on the 
clouds, accompanied by angelic armies. They not 
only held this but they held that this had been 
explicitly taught by Jesus as He went in and out 
among them. We shall first consider their psy- 
chological processes, and then ascertain how they 
fit in with or are borne out by the literary evi- 
dences. 

Our sources make it clear that the crucifixion of 
Jesus threw His Apostles into profound despair. 
The Apocalypses have been termed ''the Gospel of 
despair" because the despairing mood is the psy- 
chological breeding-place of the Apocalyptic hope. 
There is first the belief that the historic process has 
failed. There is no hope except as that failure may 
be retrieved by a miracle. Analogously, the Apos- 
tles believed that the crucifixion of Jesus marked 
the failure of His Messianic career. Out of their 
despair there was born the hope that this failure of 
His Cause was to be retrieved by a miracle. In a 
few days after His death His Personal adherents 
came together testifying that one and all had re- 
ceived unmistakable personal evidence of His sur- 
vival. This signified that God Himself had placed 
upon Jesus' claims to the Messiahship the final seal 
of approval. Nay more, He was now the Messiah 
in a far more glorious sense than they had ever 



" The Eschatological Problem" 109 

before dreamed. Without doubt He would come 
in a few weeks, or possibly months, and restore 
the kingdom to Israel, placing His loyal followers 
upon thrones of judgment. This view harmonized 
with the widely accepted Apocalyptic expectation 
of the Jews. The Apostles are quick to discover 
not only that their risen Master fits perfectly into 
the general expectation but that He gives to it a 
touch of immediacy and concrete reality. In fact, 
once the Apocalyptic view has been accepted, His 
place in it as witnessed by the Apostles becomes so 
reasonable that thousands of Jews soon accept 
their teaching, among them even members of the 
sect of the Pharisees against whom Jesus had di- 
rected His most unrelenting polemic. It became 
well-nigh self-evident to the disciples that their 
Master must clearly have foreseen this and hinted 
at it all along. Hence, they would diligently 
search His words to discover this latent meaning. 
Later, as time moved on, and the expectation failed 
to be realized the Apocalyptic mood prompted more 
desperate measures. There must be somewhere an 
Apocalypse of Jesus. The demand produced the 
supply. Apocalyptic oracles were already in circu- 
lation. One of these must undoubtedly have come 
from Him. It only remains to decide which one 
and then embody it in the Gospels. This probably 
explains the origin of the great Apocalyptic dis- 
course in Mark 13, and its subsequent enlarge- 
ment and editing by Matthew and Luke follow 
naturally. 



no Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

III 

In its final form this Apocalypse, which exhibits 
so little the impress of the Personality and familiar 
style of Jesus, employs all the Apocalyptic device 
of predating and turning history into the form of 
prophecy and forging the authoritative name. 

The probable connection between the supposed 
predictions and the events in history of the early 
Church thrown into the form of prophecy is clearly 
made by H. B. Streeter in the Oxford Studies in the 
Synoptic Gospels — page 180 and following: 

We notice first that the Apocalypse (i.e. St. Mark 13) 
purports to have been delivered privately to certain dis- 
ciples. This is to explain how it is that it has hitherto 
been unknown to Christians in general — a mark of late 
date of publication. We are reminded of the secret 
traditions from particular Apostles produced by the later 
Gnostics. It is emphasized that the long delay of the 
Parousia, which was such a difficulty for the early Church, 
had been foreseen by the Master and privately explained 
to an inner circle. ' ' But it is not the end yet ' ' 1 — He had 
foreseen the series of persecutions and catastrophes, in 
each of which as it arrived the faithful had seen the har- 
binger of that end which never came. " Now take care, 
I am telling you of it all beforehand" (St. Mark 13: 28) . 2 
He had given also the reason of His delay. It was that 
there might be time for the Gospel to be first preached to 
all the Gentiles (13: 10) — a reason suggested by the 
thought in Romans 11 (cf. especially verses II, 12, 25), 

!St. Mark 13:7. 

2 Genuine material is here used, as Jesus had expected perse- 
cutions alike for Himself and His followers. 



1 ' The Eschatological Problem " 1 1 1 

that the conversion of Israel was predestinated, but post- 
poned till the Gentiles had been gathered in. Famines, 
cf. that in Acts 11:28, earthquakes at Laodicea in 61 
A.D., or Pompeii in 62 A.D. He had foretold, but these 
were but the beginnings of birth pangs (13: 9), that is, of 
the calamities which it was generally expected would 
usher in the Messianic age. He had seen, too, great 
world-wide wars, verse 8, as in the year of the four Em- 
perors culminating in the sack of Jerusalem, verses 14 to 
20 — a time in which "had not the Lord shortened it no 
flesh would have been saved" — all this the Master had 
foreseen. He had foreseen St. Paul, 13:9, accused be- 
fore the Sanhedrin, five times scourged in the synagogue, 
standing before Felix and Festus (governors), before 
Agrippa and Nero (kings) for His Name's sake. He 
had foretold the horrors of the Neronian persecutions 
when the Christians first arrested informed, as Tacitus 
relates, on their brethren ("brother will betray brother 
to death" verse 12), and Christians were hated by all 
men, verse 13, accused, says Tacitus, of " odium humani 
generis." Lastly, He had foreseen one final peril, the 
false Christs and false prophets displaying signs and 
wonders, who might "deceive even the elect" at the last 
moment on the very eve of His return. . . . 

The second object is to encourage those whose hopes 
are failing. Now at last He is near the door, 13: 29, His 
coming will follow this last tribulation as closely as sum- 
mer follows the fig-tree's leaves. 1 

We have seen that the object of the Apocalypses 
was to encourage with the hope of a speedy deliv- 
erance those who were suffering persecutions and 

1,1 Oxford Studies," p. 180 f. 



112 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

loss. Historic events are recited in the form of 
prophecy down to the time of the writer, after 
which the real prediction begins, usually, as in this 
case, of the speedy coming of the deliverer. Here, 
as in all the other Apocalypses, the actual crucial 
prediction has remained unfulfilled. 

Before looking further for traces of the "eschatol- 
ogizing" of the Gospels, we will ask what factor 
or factors in the teaching of Jesus would adapt 
themselves as affording an opening for the grafting 
in of the Apocalyptic idea. But two such elements 
need to be mentioned, — First, the primary message 
of Jesus, "the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." 
Second, the undoubted fact that Jesus had proph- 
esied the destruction of the temple. In the next 
chapter we shall see that Jesus' prophecy of the de- 
struction of the temple was based upon prophetic 
hostility to the cult and the conviction that it stood 
in the way of the triumph of the prophetic religion. 
By the time this Apocalypse was written the author 
considered the destruction of the temple in the light 
of a calamity. In the earliest or Markan version 
we are told that immediately after this prophecy 
Peter, James and John asked Jesus privately, on 
the Mount of Olives, "When shall these things be 
and what signs shall be when these things shall be 
fulfilled?" 1 In spite of the fact that Jesus had 
condemned the Pharisees for asking for a sign and 
had told them that they should have no sign except 
that of the prophet Jonah, He is now represented 

i Mk. 13: 3, 4. 



11 The Eschatological Problem" 113 

as acceding to a request made in private which He 
had refused to comply with in public. 

In the next later account, incorporated in Mat- 
thew's Gospel, the audience has increased from the 
three to include the twelve. The sign asked for is 
not only that of the destruction of the temple but 
also "What shall be the sign of thy coming and of 
the end of the world?" 1 In order to realize the 
lateness of this passage we have only to recall that 
after the death of Jesus it was very plain that the 
Apostles had not been prepared for His resurrection. 
These words imply a thorough familiarity on their 
part with the thought not only of His resurrection 
but of His second coming. 

The latest account of all, in Luke, chapter 21, 
represents the Apocalyptic discourse as no longer 
having been given to a small circle but as having 
been spoken in the temple itself, to a large gathering 
of people. Here again He is represented as naming 
a variety of the very " signs" that He had previ- 
ously declared would not be given to that genera- 
tion, and the "signs" are the usual external ones, 
such as, "signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in 
the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, 
with perplexity; the sea and waves roaring" . . . 
(v. 25). In connection with the sign of the "abom- 
ination of desolation" 2 we have a significant aside 
to the understanding reader. "Let him that read- 
eth understand. " This plainly betrays the fact 

1 Matt. 24: 3. 

2 Mk. 13: 14; Mt. 24: 15. 



114 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

that the Evangelist is not reporting a spoken dis- 
course but is copying a document which bears all 
the earmarks of being a small pseudepigraphical 
Apocalypse. According to this small Apocalypse 
the "coming of the Son of Man" is to follow close 
upon the destruction of the temple. After this 
event, as time passed by without the promised ful- 
fillment, new matter is introduced to explain that 
the delay had really been foreseen. Hence the 
Apocalypse bristles with contradictions. In one 
place we read that the Parousia is to follow imme- 
diately upon the destruction of Jerusalem (or the 
temple), " immediately after the tribulation of 
those days." l This gives us the date of the Apoca- 
lypse as immediately following that event. After 
the lapse of some time an explanatory statement is 
inserted (earlier in the discourse): "The Gospel 
must first be published among all nations." 2 When 
Luke's Gospel received its present form a greater 
period of time had elapsed since the destruction of 
the temple and the further words in explanation 
thereof are introduced. "And Jerusalem shall be 
trodden down of the Gentiles, until the time of the 
Gentiles be fulfilled." 3 

IV 

In his appendix to the "Oxford Studies" Streeter 
brings out the tendency of the Evangelists to elab- 

■ l Mt. 24: 29; Mk. 13: 24. 
2 Mt. 24: 13; Mk. 13: 10. 
3 Lk. 21: 24. 



1 ' The Eschatological Problem " 115 

orate the eschatological idea which only occurs in 
simple form in Q (in three passages which speak of 
the Kingdom as coming unexpectedly that is, with- 
out premonitory signs). His syllabus 1 contains the 
following summary: 

In Q the emphasis is rather on the conception of the 
Kingdom as already present and to be extended by a 
process of gradual growth. Sayings implying that its 
appearance is future and catastrophic also occur, but 
they are not elaborated in any detail. 

In St. Mark — especially in Chapter 13 — the emphasis 
is on the future catastrophic conception, which is worked 
out with much detail of the conventional Apocalyptic 
type. 

In Matthew the detail is still further elaborated, and 
both by what he adds and what he omits the catastrophic 
conception is enhanced. 

The same tendency was no doubt in operation even 
before Q was written down, but some residuum of Apoca- 
lyptic eschatology in the authentic teachings of Christ is 
required to explain the beliefs of the early Church. 

This "residuum" I believe, to have been (as in- 
dicated above) a combination of the proclamation 
"the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" (and the fact 
that Jesus considered Himself as the Prophet- 
Messiah), taken with His prophecy of the destruc- 
tion of the temple which was misinterpreted by His 
followers as a catastrophic sign, instead of an event 
in the moral progress of the history of the King- 
dom. We shall now consider a few instances 

1 Op. cit. p. 424. 
10 



n6 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

wherein the Apocalyptic idea was read into au- 
thentic expressions of Jesus. 

The most striking of these is the tendency to read 
an eschatological significance into the phrase "Son 
of Man. " The Evangelists believed that this 
phrase embodied a cryptic Messianic sign. We 
have already seen that the phrase in the original 
Aramaic signified "a man" or "mankind," and 
that it was also used as a circumlocution for the 
personal pronoun. After it had been literally 
translated into Greek the Aramaic idiom was lost. 
Nevertheless the phrase frequently occurs in our 
Gospels as a self-designation by Jesus of which 
we cite the following: "The Son of Man hath 
not where to lay His head." 1 "The Son of Man 
is not come to destroy men's lives but to save 
them." 2 "The Son of Man (ie., T) came eating 
and drinking." 3 

The first Evangelist shows the strongest ten- 
dency to read the Apocalyptic idea into the text. 
For example, Luke 9: 27 — " But I tell you of a truth 
there be some standing here which shall not taste of 
death till they see the Kingdom of God" — becomes 
in Matthew 16:28, "Verily, I say unto you there 
be some standing here which shall not taste of death 
till they see the Son of Man coming with His angels." 
The Lukan rendering is supported by Mark 9:1. 

!Mt. 8:20; Lk. 9: 58. 
2 Lk. 9: 56. 

3 Mt. 11:19. For further illustrations see Mt. 12:32, 40; 
13:37; 16: 13. 



1 ' The Eschatological Problem " 117 

The earlier rendering permits of a developmental 
interpretation on the understanding that the devel- 
opment is expected to move quickly. The Mat- 
thean version has become catastrophic and Apoca- 
lyptic. In place of the developmental parable of 
the seed growing secretly, 1 he substitutes the catas- 
trophic parable of the tares, introducing the phrase 
"Son of Man" in the meaning of exalted Messiah. 
As this tendency is so plainly discernible it makes it 
extremely doubtful whether Jesus could ever have 
applied the expression to Himself in this Messianic 
sense. The only Q passage in which we find this 
expectation of Jesus of His Personal return is as 
follows: " Every one, therefore, that shall confess 
me before men, him will I (or the Son of Man) con- 
fess before the angels of God; but whosoever shall 
deny me before men, him will I also deny before the 
angels of God." 2 Here Jesus is represented as lay- 
ing the utmost stress upon His Own Person as an 
indispensable factor in individual salvation. It 
expresses the idea of "the Petrine Gospel" in the 
early Chapters of Acts, rather than Jesus' own 
Gospel of the Kingdom. It contradicts the sense 
of the Q passage immediately following, "And 
whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of 
Man (or Me), it shall be forgiven him," and the 
well -authenticated passage in Matthew 7:21, "Not 
every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 

!Mk. 4: 26 f. 

2 See Harnack's "Sayings of Jesus," p. 262. 



n8 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that 
doeth the Will of my Father which is in Heaven. " \ 

In one passage the first Evangelist falls into a 
self-contradiction by his introduction of the phrase 
"Son of Man" as equivalent to Messiah. Accord- 
ing to the version of Mark, Jesus asks His disciples 
on the way to Caesarea Philippi "Whom do men 
say that I am?" 2 This becomes, in Matthew's 
version, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, 
am?" If Jesus were accustomed to apply the 
phrase to Himself in the sense of Messiah, He would 
thereby have given the answer to His question in 
stating it. Hence, there would have been no oc- 
casion for surprise at the answer of Peter. 

In conclusion we will note further illustrations of 
the tendency of Matthew to eschatologize the Gos- 
pel Message. 

He introduces the Apocalyptic phrase "consum- 
mation of the ages" not elsewhere found in the 
Gospels. He employs the Apocalyptic "weeping 
and gnashing of teeth" six times, which does not 
occur in Mark and occurs but once in Luke. He 
omits two sayings which imply the presence of the 
Kingdom, "I saw Satan fall from Heaven" and 
"The Kingdom of God cometh not with observa- 
tion, for behold it is in your midst, " which St. Luke 
records and which it may fairly be assumed existed 
inQ. 

We have now seen that the presumption created 

*See below, p. 135. 

2 Mk. 8:27. Cf. Mt. 16: 13. 



" The Eschatological Problem 1 ' 119 

by the antagonism between the theology and ethic 
of Jesus and that of the Apocalypses, that he re- 
jected the eschatological Messianic expectation, is 
corroborated by the study of the Synoptic Gospels 
which show evidence of that idea as having been 
interpolated on a large scale and its meaning forced 
into authentic sayings of Jesus. We are logically 
forced to the conclusion that there was no real 
"Apocalyptic residuum" in the Gospel of Jesus. 
We now will resume the task of reconstructing that 
Gospel in its positive aspects. 



120 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE HISTORIC JESUS — THE PROPHET MESSIAH 

The theology of the Catholic Church centered in 
a series of questions concerning the Person of Jesus 
and grouped under the general designation of 
"Christology." All the emphasis came to be con- 
centrated on the Person of Jesus as the center of 
theology and His own theological teachings were 
not only ignored but unconsciously contradicted or 
set aside. We have now to inquire into the question 
of Jesus' own view of His mission and office, as re- 
vealed in His self-consciousness, so far as that finds 
expression in His authentic teachings. To do so 
we must set aside the traditional Christological as- 
sumptions and examine the development of Chris- 
tology with a view to warrant how much of it can 
be substantiated by the authority of Jesus Himself. 

We have now to search for the starting point eft 
the Christological development. The word "Chris- 
tology" is derived from "Christos" the Greek 
translation of Messiah. "Christology," therefore, 
begins with the identification of Jesus with the 
Messiah. This identification has already taken 
place in our earliest document. "The compiler of 
Q could not imagine otherwise than that Jesus was 
the Messiah, consecrated as the Son of God at the 
Baptism." 1 This might seem to be the earliest 

1 Harnack "Sayings of Jesus," p. 243. 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 121 

statement of New Testament Christology. As a 
matter of fact it is the third stage in Christological 
development. It dates the Messiahship from the 
descent of the Holy Spirit at the time of the Bap- 
tism of Jesus accompanied by the Voice from 
Heaven, 

Thou art my son, the Beloved, 
today have I become thy father. 

This was the form of Christology which later be- 
came known as "Adoptionism." An earlier form is 
that which is found in the " Petrine Christology" in 
the discourses attributed to Peter in the early Chap- 
ters of Acts. In this form the Messiahship of 
Jesus begins at the resurrection and is to be vin- 
dicated at the Parousia. Though exalted to the 
right hand of God, Jesus, so far as His Messiahship 
is concerned, is a Chris tus futurus — is to become 
Messiah at the Parousia. But back of this as the 
earliest form of Messiahship we have Jesus' own 
conception of His Mission. This question is to re- 
ceive further consideration which will point to the 
conclusion that Jesus regarded Himself as the 
Messiah in the sense that He was the Prophetical 
Inaugurator of the Kingdom of God. 

We now have reached three steps in the New 
Testament development of Christology: (1) Jesus 
appears as the Prophet-Messiah; (2) Jesus is 
preached as "the Messiah Who is to come"; (3) 
Jesus is regarded as having been made Messiah at 
His Baptism. Later on the beginning of the Mes- 



122 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

siahship is dated back to the birth of Jesus in the 
* 'Gospel of the Nativity" which introduces both 
the political and supernatural elements by provid- 
ing genealogies through Joseph back to David, and 
at the same time denying Him human paternity 
through His conception by the Holy Ghost. In 
Matthew's version Mary's Son is given the name of 
Jesus because "He will save His people from their 
sins." 1 In Luke's Gospel the angel Gabriel is made 
to promise that the Son of Mary would sit upon the 
throne of David and " reign over the house of Jacob 
forever and to His reign there will be no end." 2 
Here we have a synthesis of the political-monarchical 
with the Apocalyptic, for this view evidently ex- 
presses the expectation of the early Church which 
awaited fulfillment. This represents a fourth step 
in Christological development. The fifth step is 
found in St. Paul's conception of the Christ as the 
"Heavenly Man." 3 This Messiah was divine by 
nature. Yet it would have been "a prize" for Him 
to have been "on an equality with God" — "He did 
not snatch at equality with God" . . . "There- 
fore God raised Him high and conferred on Him a 
Name above all Names." 4 The final stage is taken 
in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel which makes 
Him Christ from before the beginning of creation, 
co-eternal with God, and co-equal. We note in 

!Mt. 1:21. 
2 Lk. 1:32, 33. 
si Cor. 15:47. 
4 Phil. 2:5-11. 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 123 

passing that St. Paul's view was perilously near 
the "Homoiousion" which was condemned by the 
Council at Nicea as the Arian heresy. 

The omission of the Gospel of the Infancy in Q 
and St. Mark may be due to the view which they 
seem to have held that the Messiahship of Jesus 
began at the Baptism. Its omission from the 
Fourth Gospel may be due to the fact that the 
author held that the Messiahship was not to be 
dated from the conception of Jesus but as existing 
from eternity. St. Paul's omission may, similarly, 
be due to his opinion that Jesus existed as a Divine 
Being before His birth. In St. Matthew and St. 
Luke the idea is implied that the Messiahship of 
Jesus was associated with the circumstances of His 
Nativity, but at the same time they seem to incor- 
porate the earlier view that it was conferred at the 
Baptism. Having summarized the development of 
Christological doctrine in the New Testament we 
now return to investigate more fully the "Chris- 
tology" of Jesus Himself. 

Harnack has pointed out that all of the Christo- 
logical elements in Q are contained in the introduc- 
tory stories of the Baptism and Temptation. Else- 
where it is only implicit with the exception of the 
doubtful passages about the second coming. To 
quote once more from Harnack, ''The Christology 
of the source as the compiler understood it, presents 
a perfectly simple and consistent picture. The 
compiler Q could not imagine otherwise than that 
Jesus was the Messiah, consecrated as Son of God 



124 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

at the Baptism; all the sayings of his compilation, 
therefore, stand out against this background. If, 
however, we think away the introduction the re- 
sultant picture is essentially different. We have 
now before us a compilation of sayings in which the 
speaker is a teacher, a prophet, one who was more 
than a prophet — the final decisive Messenger of 
God; but so surely as he demands unconditional 
obedience to his commands, in which the Will of 
God is expressed, and calls upon men to follow him, 
so little does he do this with the expressed self -wit- 
ness; 'I am the Messiah.'" 1 

In regard to Mark's Gospel as the result of criti- 
cal investigation he reaches a similar conclusion, 
"that our Lord during the first and longest period 
of His ministry did not speak of Himself as Messiah 
(because He at first neither regarded Himself as the 
Messiah, nor indeed could so regard Himself), and 
even rejected the title of Messiahship when it was 
applied to Himself, but that, on the other hand, He 
was possessed with the strongest conviction that, as a 
Messenger of God, He was entrusted with a Mission 
of decisive import, and that He knew God as none 
other knew Him — a conviction to which He again 
and again gave expression." 2 

The weight of critical opinion is on the side of 
the view that the Messiahship of Jesus remained a 
secret till the incident on the road to Caesarea 
Philippi when He accepted Peter's designation of 

1 Op. cit. p. 244. 

2 Harnack, Op. cit. p. 244. 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 125 

Himself as the Christ. Harnack holds that in ac- 
cepting the title He applied it to Himself in the 
futuristic sense. This is the view of the eschatolo- 
gists who believe that Jesus had become convinced 
of the necessary failure of His prophetic mission and 
that He looked for the retrieval of that failure by 
His own return, after His death, as the supernatural 
"Son of Man." This explanation is as superficial as 
it is easy. We shall examine our records of this inci- 
dent with a view to ascertaining if the true interpreta- 
tion of Jesus' thought of the Messiahship is not the 
prophetic conception of the "Suffering Servant." 

This incident is omitted in Q and finds its simplest 
recital in Mark 8: 27, f : — "Then Jesus and His dis- 
ciples set off from the villages of Caesarea Philippi ; 
and on the road He inquired of His disciples 'Who 
do people say that I am?' 'John the Baptist,' they 
told Him, ' though some say Elijah and others say 
you are one of the prophets.' So he inquired of 
them 'And who do you say I am?' Peter replied, 
'You are the Christ.' Then He forbade them to tell 
anyone about Him. And He proceeded to teach 
them that the Son of Man had to endure great suf- 
fering, to be rejected by the elders and scribes, to 
be killed and after three days to rise again; He 
spoke of this quite freely. Peter took Him and be- 
gan to reprove Him for it. But He turned on him 
and noticing His disciples reproved Peter, telling 
him 'Get behind Me, you Satan! Your outlook is 
not God's but man's.' " l 

1 Moffat's version. 



126 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

The passages in Matthew about Peter the Rock 
on whom the Church is to be built are generally re- 
garded as a late interpolation, as well as the words 
of praise commending Peter's insight. After ac- 
cepting the title of Messiah Jesus enjoins secrecy, 
we are bound to think, because the popular mean- 
ing of that word was quite different from His own. 
He proceeds to explain to the Twelve that His 
Messiahship entails suffering and death at the hands 
of the elders, high priests and scribes. Words are 
here introduced by the Evangelist foretelling the 
resurrection, but in view of the absence of that 
expectation in the minds of the incredulous disciples 
when it was announced to them, this must have 
been introduced as an afterthought by the Evangel- 
ist. The words — "Peter took Him and began to 
reprove Him for it," are incongrous with the words 
revealing the stupendous miracle of the resurrection 
which they immediately follow. The real interpre- 
tation, then, seems to be that having accepted the 
title of Messiah Jesus proceeds to explain the nature 
of the Messiahship, which is not that of a conquering 
king, or the supernatural Being coming in the future 
on the clouds of Heaven, but is that of the Prophetic 
Servant of God Who gives His life in inaugurating 
the Kingdom. Peter's rebuke arose from the fact 
that he did not accept any such mournful interpre- 
tation of the Messiahship, but looked upon it from 
the monarchical point of view with all its attendant 
splendor. This explains the retort of Jesus "Get 
behind me, you Satan, your outlook is not God's 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 127 

but man's." This reminds us of the story of the 
Temptation in which Jesus rejected the temptation 
to become a world-conquering Messiah, in which 
He is represented as saying to the Tempter — "Get 
thee hence, Satan." Peter now appears in the role 
of Tempter and hence the severity of the epithet 
"Satan." In this instance, as in the earlier, Jesus 
refused to be an exploiting Prince. Jesus is then 
represented as warning His followers that, if they 
are to continue to follow Him, they must deny 
themselves and take up their crosses and follow 
Him and be prepared to lose their lives for His sake 
and for the Gospel's. 

n 

Having ascertained that the Christology of Jesus 
consisted in His self-consciousness as the Prophet- 
Messiah, w r e have now to take account of His pro- 
phetic career. 

We have seen that the doctrine of Jesus clearly 
belonged to the prophetic school. It is very clear 
that He was recognized as a prophet by His con- 
temporaries. At His "triumphal entry" into Jeru- 
salem He is hailed by "the multitude" as Jesus, 
"the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee." 1 After His 
resurrection certain of His disciples are reported by 
St. Luke to have characterized Him as "a prophet 
mighty in deed and word before God and all the 
people." 2 In the Petrine discourses early in Acts 

*Mt. 21: 11. 

2 Lk. 24: 19. 



128 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

He is identified with the "prophet like unto Moses," 
promised in Deuteronomy. It is also equally clear 
that He referred to Himself under the title of 
"prophet." 1 His method of teaching resembled that 
of the prophets and contrasted with that of His 
contemporaries, "For He taught them like an au- 
thority, not like their own scribes." 2 His Gospel 
like that of the prophets contains two parts — the 
ministry of rebuke and the ministry of consolation. 
This latter was central in that the proclamation of 
the nearness of the Kingdom was fraught with a 
promise of deliverance from all personal and social 
ills. 

Jesus constantly expressed the highest admira- 
tion for the ancient prophets. This admiration was 
extended to John the Baptist because Jesus rec- 
ognized him to be a true prophet. He declared 
that all the prophets were living in the Kingdom of 
God. 3 He pronounced those to be blessed who are 
found worthy to share in the persecutions that had 
been meted out to the prophets. He exhorted His 
followers to be like the prophets. As we shall see, 
it was part of His program for the ushering in of 
the Kingdom of God to organize a movement of 
prophets. Jesus' prophetic message of rebuke was 
directed against the rich and the Pharisees and the 
hierarchy— all of whom belonged to the exploiting 
classes. He denounced the exploiters of His day, 

1 Mt. 13: 57; Mk. 6: 4; Lk. 4: 17, 24; 13: 33. 

2 Mt. 7:29. 
3 Lk. 13:28, 



The Historic Jesits — The Prophet Messiah 129 

as the prophets had denounced the exploiters of their 
day, as the enemies of the Kingdom of God. His 
indignation was directed against those who are 
harsh toward their fellows, the vengeful who look 
to God for forgiveness while exacting the uttermost 
farthing from their debtors; against the blind lead- 
ers of the blind, who stand in the way of the people's 
attaining the knowledge that is essential to their 
welfare; against the mammon worshippers who 
hypocritically pretend to be worshippers of God, 
those who oppress the weak, the children, the 
widows ; against those who shut up the Kingdom of 
Heaven against men, who declare themselves the 
favorites of God while holding the harlots, the 
publicans, and the Gentiles to be eternally damned. 
In God's day, Jesus declared, those who have made 
themselves first shall be last, for the publicans, 
harlots and Gentiles will enter the Kingdom of 
Heaven by the way of penitence while the alleged 
righteous ones will exclude themselves by their own 
exclusiveness. 

The literature of invective reaches a climax of 
fury in the discourse against the scribes and Phari- 
sees. 1 The pretensions to righteousness, to religious 
authority, to high moral character, are relentlessly 
unmasked. "Woe to you, you irreligious scribes 
and Pharisses! You are like tombs, whitewashed; 
they look comely on the outside, but inside they 
are full of dead men's bones and all manner of im- 

1 Mt. 23; and Lk. 11. 



130 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

purity. So to men you seem just, but inside you 
are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." l 

Jesus in this discourse saw His struggle with the 
Pharisees as a continuation of the warfare of the 
prophets against the adherents of external and 
ceremonial religion. He challenged them, the de- 
scendants of those who slew the prophets, to "fill 
up the measure of their fathers" by slaying Him, 
the Successor of the prophets. Their ceremonial 
scrupulosity aroused nothing but His scorn and 
contempt. Having been reproved by the Pharisees 
for neglecting the customary ceremonial ablutions 
before eating, Jesus replied: "Not that which en- 
tereth into a man but that which proceedeth out of 
the heart defileth a man." 2 He uttered the basic 
principle which divided the ceremonial from the 
prophetic type of religion. In so doing, as Holtz- 
mann declares, "Jesus pronounces, with one sweep, 
all the laws which are contained in Deuteronomy, 
chapters 11 to 15, and which abundantly engaged 
the attention of the Pharisees, to be without bind- 
ing force." 3 Holtzmann might have gone further 
by stating that Jesus regarded these ordinances as 
useless and absurd. 

Against the priestly exploiters of His day Jesus 
proceeded not only with words, as against the Phari- 
sees, but with deeds. 

Jesus broke radically with legalism and Judaism. 

1 Matt. 23 : 27, 28, Moffat's version. 

2 Mt. 15:17; Mk. 7: 18. 

3 0. Holtzmann, Op. cit. p. 22. 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 131 

(Later on His disciples undertook to repair the 
breach.) His prophetic campaign was carried on 
against the temple cultus. Like His predecessors, 
the insurgent prophets, He held the temple and the 
Jewish hierarchy to be the archenemy of true re- 
ligion. It was so false that it could not hope for 
reformation. It must be destroyed. 

The ancient prophets, Amos and Jeremiah, had 
prophesied the destruction of the temple in Bethel 
and of the temple of Jerusalem in their own day on 
the ground that they were false to the true religion 
of Jehovah. The Great Unknown had declared 
that it was absurd to suppose that any temple built 
with hands could serve as the abiding place of God. 
In the spirit of the two former Jesus prophesied the 
overthrow of the temple and its complete destruc- 
tion. In characteristic homely phrase, Jesus had 
expressed His view of the hopelessness of reforming 
institutionalized Judaism as follows: 

No one sews a piece of undressed cloth on an old coat, 
For the patch breaks away from it, and the tear is made 

worse ; 
Nor do men pour fresh wine into old wine-skins, 
Otherwise the wine-skins burst, and the wine is spilt — 

the wine-skins are ruined. 
They put fresh wine into fresh wine-skins and so both are 

preserved. 1 

We know that Jesus prophesied the destruction of 
the temple and we are on safe ground in holding 

1 Mt. 9: 16, 17, Moffat's version. 
11 



132 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

that this prophecy carried with it a hostile intent. 
We have evidence that when the disciples lapsed 
into the Apocalyptic belief they regarded this proph- 
ecy as the prediction of a catastrophe. Accord- 
ing to Mark Jesus was charged at His trial with 
having made the statement "I will destroy this 
temple that is made with hands and within three 
days I will build another not made with hands." 1 
In Matthew's version the statement is softened to 
read: "I am able to destroy this temple of God 
and build it again in three days." 2 Both these 
Evangelists declare that this was a false charge, or 
at least that it was made by false witnesses. Yet 
from other sources we can get a pretty clear con- 
firmation of the view that this was precisely what 
Jesus did say. He may have said it only to the 
Twelve, and perhaps this was the " secret" which 
Judas betrayed. The Johannine account, though 
later, and bearing marks of editorial interpretation, 
nevertheless is confirmatory of the testimony of the 
witnesses. Instead of the words "I will destroy 
this temple made with hands," the Fourth Evangel- 
ist gives, as an authentic utterance of Jesus, ac- 
companying the cleansing of the temple, the words 
— " Destroy this sanctuary and I will raise it up in 
three days." 3 His actual words on this occasion 
are interpreted as showing "zeal for the temple" 
instead of hostility toward it. The words are alle- 

1 Mk. 14: 58. 
2 Mt. 26:61. 
8 John 2 : 19. 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 133 

gorized by the Evangelist, by being made to refer to 
the temple of His Body, its destruction at the cruci- 
fixion, and its subsequent resurrection, but he is 
constrained to admit that the Apostles did not 
realize that this was the meaning of Jesus' state- 
ment till after the resurrection. According to the 
Fourth Evangelist Jesus gave this answer to those 
who asked Him to state by what right and authority 
He cleansed the temple. In Mark's Gospel when 
this question was put to Him we are told He re- 
fused to give any answer till His questioners had 
answered Him the question by what authority John 
the Baptist was acting. 1 His questioners refused 
to answer, whereupon Jesus refused to answer 
them, thereby implying that both He and John 
were acting under the same prophetic Heaven-born 
authority. 

Holtzmann, 2 was the first critic in modern times 
to recognize the fact that Jesus' claim to prophetic 
authority to destroy the temple, and to erect an- 
other religious movement on its ruins, was equiva- 
lent to a claim to the Messiahship. 

Jesus in attacking the money-changers and the 
dealers in sacrificial animals was striking at a 
priestly monopoly which was an instrument of 
graft and oppression. The words with which He 
accompanied the act are illuminating. He quoted 
from the universalistic Great Unknown the ideal 
'My house shall be the house of prayer for all na- 

1 Mk. 11:27. 

2 Leben Jesu, p. 327. 



134 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

tions"; from Jeremiah He quotes the actual — "but 
ye have made it a den of thieves." l Mark gives the 
earlier quotation in full; the later Synoptists omit 
the words "for all the peoples." From the evidence 
we may infer that Jesus considered it a part of His 
religious campaign to overthrow the temple worship 
and its supporters. He said in effect: "I will de- 
stroy this temple made with hands, the perverter 
of true religion, the exploiter of men, the source of 
false conceptions of God, and, in a brief space, I 
will establish a new temple in its place, not a physi- 
cal temple built with hands, but a spiritual society 
of penitent souls united to God, seeking first His 
Kingdom and bringing it in through hearing my 
words and doing them." It is perfectly plain that 
the representatives of the hierarchy understood 
perfectly what they were doing when they sought 
and accomplished the death of Jesus, their great 
prophetic antagonist. 

IIJ& 

Having a clear idea of what Jesus aimed at, we 
have now to consider the program which He pro- 
posed as the method for attaining the end. 

Let us first of all ask what position Jesus assigned 
to Himself in the movement which He was inaugu- 
rating. He had no doubt that He was its Divinely 
appointed Leader. Jesus was a prophet but at the 
same time He was more than a prophet. What the 

1 Isa. 56: 7; Jer. 7: 11. See also Mark 11:7; Mt. 21: 13; Lk. 
19:46. 



The Historic Jesus —The Prophet Messiah 135 

earlier prophets had foreseen and striven for was to 
be accomplished through His agency and Leader- 
ship. He said to His followers, "Blessed are your 
eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear; for 
verily I say unto you that many prophets (and 
kings) desired to see the things which ye see and 
have not seen them, and to hear the things which 
ye hear, and have not heard them." 1 Like the 
prophets He did not lay the crucial emphasis on 
His Person but on His Message which was God's 
truth. He did not make Himself the center of a 
cult to be an object of worship, but He did put 
Himself in a position of Leadership and appealed 
for obedience on the part of all sincere seekers after 
the Kingdom. To enter the Kingdom it was not 
enough to call Him "Lord," or to preach in His 
Name. Only he who heard His words and obeyed 
them was like the man who founded his house on a 
rock while he who built on any other doctrine (such 
as that of the scribes and Pharisees) built on shift- 
ing sands. Jesus is conscious of such a solidarity 
existing between Himself and the realm of His 
Father that He holds (according to Q) that every 
one that confesses Him before men He will confess 
before God and the angels. In Mark's version we 
have probably an earlier and more accurate render- 
ing of the same saying: "For whosoever shall be 
ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous 
and sinful generation, I shall be ashamed of him," 

^his is aQ passage, Section 26. Cf. Mt. 13: 16, 17; Lk. 10: 
23. 24. 



136 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

or, "the Son of Man shall be ashamed of him in the 
coming Kingdom." 

Jesus disclaims any title to exceptional goodness 
when He says on being addressed as "Good Master" 
— "Why callest thou Me good?" 1 In this revela- 
tion of His self-consciousness we see that in con- 
trast to the self-consciousness of goodness that 
marked the Pharisees, Jesus felt that He (no matter 
how complete His devotion of Himself to the 
Father) was no better than the normal man should 
be. God is good in a sense in which no other, in- 
cluding Jesus Himself, is good. Jesus gives Him- 
self a central position through the authority which 
He claimed to offer consolation to the needy and 
afflicted, as where He makes His own the words of 
the Deutero-Isaiah: 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; 

for he has consecrated me to preach the 

Gospel to the poor, 
He has sent me to proclaim release for the 

captives 
and recovery of sight for the blind, 
to set free the oppressed, 
to proclaim the Lord's year of favor. 2 

Another passage in which Jesus presents Himself 
in the r61e of Revealer of God and consoler of men 
through His Leadership is found in the so-called 
Johannine passage in the Synoptics. 3 

1 Mt. 19: 17. 

2 Lk. 4: 18, Moffat's version. 

3 Mt. 11:25-30; Lk. 10:21-22. 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 137 

Prof. Bacon in an article in the Harvard Theo- 
logical Review, October, 191 6, adopts the opinion 
of E. Norden (in his "Agnostos Theos") that this 
passage is a quotation of a fragment of Lyric Wis- 
dom. In Luke 1 1 : 49, Jesus quotes a passage which 
He attributes to the "Wisdom of God." The same 
passage is given by Matthew as an original saying 
of Jesus. The former passage is arranged by Bacon 
to bring out its lyric form as follows: 

I 
I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, 
Because thou didst hide these things from the wise and 

understanding 
And didst reveal them unto babes. 
Yea, Father, for such was the good pleasure in thy sight. 

II 

All things were revealed to me by my Father ; 
But none hath known the Son save the Father; 
Neither hath any known the Father save the Son 
And he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him. 

Ill 

Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden ; 

Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, 

And ye shall find rest for your souls, 

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. 

This passage has been held to teach, in the middle 
strophe, that Jesus claimed an exclusive knowledge 
of the Father, in spite of the fact that in the first 
strophe Jesus represents these things as having 
been revealed "unto babes." But the essential 



138 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

thing for us is that, whether this be an original 
lyric of Jesus, or one which He by quoting has made 
His own, He nevertheless has, as mystic Gocl-knower 
and prophet, the office of God-revealer and consoler 
through His Example and Leadership. 

Jesus' mission was militant. In a Q passage He 
asks "Think ye that I am come to send peace on 
the earth?" and answers, "I am not come to send 
peace but a sword." His militancy, however, was 
purely moral and in no sense contemplated the use 
of force. What He expected of His loyal followers 
comes out in His Commission to the Twelve, in 
Matthew 10:5 and following. They are to pro- 
claim the near approach of the Kingdom. They 
are to exercise the ministry of healing, but they are 
not to engage in exploitation of any kind. They 
are not to carry money, extra clothing, or provi- 
sions, nor to accept any of these things beyond their 
immediate needs. They are not to accept money 
at all. They are to subsist upon such hospitality 
as may be offered them freely. They are going 
forth to encounter danger as a direct result of their 
doctrine. They are to go out as sheep among 
wolves. They are warned that prophetic persecu- 
tions and sufferings await them. The claims of the 
Kingdom are to be put before the claims of the 
family and of life itself. He who goes forth as a 
follower of Jesus takes his life in his hands. He 
who carries the cross — the burden of the message of 
the Kingdom — carries also the implement on which 
he may meet his death. No promise of reward is 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 139 

contained in connection with this hazardous enter- 
prise. The fate which is to overtake the Teacher is 
still more likely to overtake the disciples. The re- 
ward is spiritual as we learn from the last Beatitude 
in the Sermon on the Mount in the exhortation, 
"Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your 
reward in Heaven, for so persecuted they the 
prophets which were before you." 

The prophet's reward consists in his opportunity 
to co-operate with God; and Jesus refuses to hold 
out to His followers any promise of special prefer- 
ment in the coming Kingdom. This comes out 
very clearly in His refusal of the request of Zebe- 
dee's children to be permitted to sit at His right 
hand and His left in the coming Kingdom. 1 In- 
stead He promises them nothing but the privilege of 
being baptized with Him in the baptism of blood 
and of drinking with Him the cup of death. This 
incident casts doubt upon the authenticity and 
genuineness of the passage wherein Jesus, in answer 
to a request of Peter to know what the Apostles 
were to get out of their devotion to Him, is alleged 
to have said that they should sit on thrones judging 
the twelve tribes of Israel. According to Q — Jesus 
once said — "They who follow me shall sit on 
thrones." Perhaps the Evangelist finding this iso- 
lated statement invented the setting as a frame- 
work for the saying. As for the saying itself it 
may easily have been derived from the book of 
Enoch — traces of the influence of which we have 

1 Mt. 20: 20. 



140 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

already noted as frequent in the Gospels. In Enoch, 
chapter 108, verse 12, we read, 

And I will bring forth in shining light those who have 
loved my holy name and I will seat each on the 
throne of his honor. 

Another similar Enoch passage is found in chapter 
51, verse 3: 

And the elect ones shall in those days sit on my throne. 

But the program of Jesus comprehended a moral 
Leadership of conduct, as well as of words. This 
program of conduct namely, the prophetic law of 
service, was not merely valid as a "war measure" 
but it was intended both to inaugurate the King- 
dom and to remain its underlying principle of com- 
munity life after it should be established. This 
new principle of action was to supersede "the lord- 
ship of the Gentiles" as well as every other form of 
exploitation which the prophets and Jesus had de- 
nounced. This brings us back to the consideration 
of the ethic of Jesus which we shall show not to 
have been an interim-ethic but an absolute, which 
was not regarded as a thing of mere speculative in- 
terest, but as an actual program to govern the daily 
conduct of ordinary men and women. To be sure 
its demands sound highly impracticable in the pres- 
ent order but that simply serves to accentuate the 
fact that the ethic of Jesus postulates the new social 
order founded upon the divine principle of loving 
co-operation and service. 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 141 

Many have supposed that Jesus expected all 
people to live without toil, directly clothed and fed 
by the Father's bounty when the Kingdom of God 
should come. This has been inferred from the un- 
derlying assumption that He conceived that future 
coming of the Heavenly community in accordance 
with the Apocalyptic ideas. Because He pointed 
out that the lilies of the field are clothed without 
spinning and the wild birds are fed without sowing, 
reaping or gathering into storehouses, and because 
He urged men not to anxiously accumulate a pro- 
vision against the days to come, it is inferred that 
He believed men could live without work. His 
own life and the lives of the Apostles during the 
period of His ministry are taken to indicate that He 
Himself lived without toil. 

It is true that Jesus nowhere categorically advo- 
cates the necessity of daily labor. But does He 
not everywhere clearly assume its necessity? From 
boyhood He worked at the trade of His father and 
was known to His fellow townsmen as " Jesus, the 
Carpenter." At times we have glimpses of Him 
assisting His fishermen disciples at their work, for 
this doubtless is the historic basis underlying the 
stories of the miraculous catch of fishes. His ap- 
proval of toil comes out constantly in His parables. 
The laborers in the vineyard, the sowers and the 
reapers, the shepherd in the hills, the fishermen at 
their nets, the woman mixing leaven with her meal, 
the man building his house on a rock, the merchant 
on his journey, the steward administering an estate, 



142 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

the servants increasing the talents entrusted them 
by trading — all of these and others Jesus uses not 
only with implied approval but as actual illustra- 
tions of essential aspects of the Kingdom of God. 
Moreover, the law of service itself is unthinkable 
except as it is connected with work for others. All 
of this shows plainly that Jesus' thought of the 
community was not that of the Apocalypse with its 
visions of miraculous abundance, but was that of a 
society of men performing their daily tasks, deliv- 
ered from all anxiety and worry about the future. 
The more I read the scattered precepts which 
belong to the body of the ethical teaching of Jesus — 
the more am I convinced that the absolute quality 
of that ethic is summed up in the single phrase 
"Be like God." Not only does His ethic consist in 
the synthesis of the " first and second command- 
ments of the law," love to God and love to man 
(the latter put on complete parity with the former 
and made to include love for enemies), but, because 
men are really sons of God, this attitude is held to 
be perfectly normal. The gist of the whole matter 
is found in the Sermon on the Mount in Mat- 
thew's Gospel, the 5th chapter, 43-48: "You have 
heard the saying, 'You must love your neighbor 
and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your 
enemies and pray for those that persecute you, that 
you may be sons of your Father in Heaven : 

He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, 
and sends rain on the just and the unjust. 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 143 

For if you love only those who love you, what 
reward do you get for that? 
do not the very taxgatherers do as much? 
and if you only salute your friends, what is 
special about that? 
do not the very pagans do as much? 
You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is per- 
fect. 1 

The ethic of Jesus is conceived as the spontane- 
ous product of a life lived in love to God and in 
service to the universal community of mankind. 
It is an ethic of true inwardness bearing the out- 
ward fruits of a life conscious of its solidarity with 
God and the company of God's human children. 
There is no externally imposed law. The law of 
God "written in the heart," as the prophet named 
it, will not only secure the fulfillment of the com- 
mandments of the law, but a man's conduct will be 
the spontaneous expression of his character and not 
a mere outward conformity to an external law from 
fear of punishment or hope of reward. If a man is 
inwardly in personal relation with God, his con- 
duct will surpass wmat is required in the law. In 
Q we have a saying wmich seems to support a Rab- 
binical and legalistic regard for the letter of the 
law. "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass 
away than for an iota of the law to lapse." 2 Taken 
in contrast to Jesus' customary disregard of the 
ceremonial law this seems a paradox. The paradox 

1 Moffat's version. 
2 Lk. 16: 17. 



144 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

disappears, however, if we keep in mind the dis- 
tinction which Jesus made between "the least" 
and the "great" commandments of the law. Ac- 
cording to Jesus "the least commandment" is of 
greater importance because it has to do not only 
with external conduct but with the sources of that 
conduct in the inner life. The least commandment 
is what the prophet meant by the law written in the 
heart. "Thou shalt not kill" is a great command- 
ment of the ancient law. "Thou shalt not hate or 
be angry" is the corresponding least commandment, 
— of little consequence in the eyes of the unthink- 
ing man, but of greater consequence in the eyes of 
God, — determining the inner temper. "Thou shalt 
not commit adultery" is another great command- 
ment. The least commandment is "Thou shalt be 
pure in heart." "Thou shalt not steal" is included 
and surpassed in the commandment "Thou shalt 
not worship mammon." The "great command- 
ment" determines what a man does — the "least 
commandment" concerns both what a man is as 
well as what he does, and it is easier for heaven and 
earth to pass away than for one of these "least 
commandments" to drop out of the moral law. 

What the eschatologists have held to be an "in- 
terim-ethic" is in reality an absolute and eternal 
ethic whose binding force is present and immediate ; 
whereas our own ethic which holds the ethic of 
Jesus to be impracticable is really the interim ethic. 
We say of that ethic, as Kirsopp Lake seems to say, 
"We cannot live up to this under existing social 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 145 

conditions and the present quality of human nature." 
Jesus says, in effect, "The present social order and 
present human nature are not true to God, they 
must therefore be changed." We say, "As the 
Kingdom of God has not yet come we must defend 
ourselves, accumulate property, and defend it." 
But in so doing we put our own temporal interests 
and temporary comfort before the Cause of the 
Kingdom. Like the Apocalyptic writers we are 
waiting for the miracle of the Kingdom to happen. 
Jesus bade us seek the Kingdom, — not to wait for 
it but to initiate it by living as its true citizens are 
to live. He realized all that this demanded in the 
way of personal loss and injury. For the interim 
they would be as sheep among wolves — they would 
suffer the fate of martyrs and prophets, but in the 
end which He believed to be not far distant the 
meek would inherit the earth. 

Our "modern" point of view is that of Nietzsche 
who thought the Sermon on the Mount "a doctrine 
for weaklings." In reality it is the doctrine of the 
world's moral heroes, — the prophets, and those who 
follow their lead. These are the true "supermen" 
who are willing to find their lives by losing them for 
the sake of the Kingdom. Their greatness is meas- 
ured by the capacity for sacrifice. The strong man 
is the man who is strong to suffer. The superhu- 
man strength and divine greatness of Jesus is mani- 
fested upon the cross whereon He prayed for His 
enemies, and it is by the power of this Cross that 
He is to redeem and renovate the world. 



146 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

1 1 II. 

In spite of the absolute emphasis which the older 
theology has put upon the death of Jesus as the 
crowning element in His life of redeeming love, it 
has not yet done justice to its profound significance. 
This has been because it has largely regarded His 
death as a drama staged by God for the benefit of 
mankind. It has regarded that death as arising 
from a predetermined necessity. It has "mecha- 
nized "it. It has found in it an analogy to the death 
of sacrificial victims required by the priestly theol- 
ogy. Finally, it has regarded it as " substitutionary " 
in the sense that the martyrdom of the Son of God 
has been held as forever excusing the martyrdom of 
the sons of God. 

By connecting the death of Jesus with His pro- 
phetic teaching and prophetic career and by rec- 
ognizing that it represents a universal prophetic 
principle and not the priestly substitution of an 
innocent victim for a guilty sinner; and by recog- 
nizing the still profounder fact that that death was 
not a mere legalistic compounding of sin but an 
aggressive incident in the warfare for the eradication 
of all sinning — we shall be able to understand the 
significance which the death of Jesus had in His 
own Mind as the crowing act in His career as In- 
augurator of the Reign of God. 

Jesus did not die simply because He claimed to 
be the Messiah. It was not an offense against the 
Jewish law to make such a claim. He died be- 



The Historic Jesus — The Prophet Messiah 147 

cause He was the Messiah of the prophetic type. 
In the long conflict between the Hebrew prophets 
and the exploiting priesthood (which was a prop 
and mainstay of the existing evil world-order of 
exploitation) the priesthood, by every possible de- 
vice, had sought to silence the prophets by threats 
of punishment and, if these did not avail, by death. 
The situation in the days of Jesus is thus set forth 
by Prof. Charles: 

"The rabbinic scholars taught that the prophets 
and Haggiographa would cease to be — for there is 
nothing in them that is not in the law. The law is 
to endure forever, and 'any prophet who attempted 
to annul one of its laws would be punished by death 1 
(Toseph 14:12)." "From the time of Nehemiah 
onward prophecy could get no hearing." l 

Because of His forcible entrance into the temple 
precincts and His denunciation of the corrupt traffic 
in sacrificial animals and His prophetic determina- 
tion to overthrow the whole priestly corrupt and 
exploiting institution, He came under the direct 
condemnation of the rabbinic law T and incurred the 
death penalty. To be sure, as we have seen, this 
act was a practical assertion of His Messianic claim 
in a prophetic sense. But this w T as no offense in 
the eyes of the Roman law. To secure His con- 
demnation at the hands of the Roman procurator 
and the infliction of the death penalty, He was ac- 
cused of claiming to be the Messiah, in the political 

Charles, in the Introduction to the Second Volume of the 
"Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha," p. vii. 
12 



148 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

sense as " pretender" to the throne of David. This 
claim was not an offense against the rabbinic law, 
but it was an act of rebellion against the Roman 
Empire. Pilate doubtless understood the fraudu- 
lent nature of the charges made by the priestly 
conspirators and sought to have Jesus released. 
But he yielded, — as an easy way of quelling the 
spirit of mob violence instigated by the priesthood. 
And so on the Cross the Prophet-Messiah became 
the Prophet- Martyr, the world's " Saving Victim," 
and the Cross was made the symbol of the warfare 
of the Kingdom of God. 



Followers of Jesus Create a Cult 149 



CHAPTER IX 

THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS SUBSTITUTE A MESSIANIC 
CULT FOR HIS BROTHERHOOD OF THE KINGDOM 

The great tragedy in the history of the prophetic 
religion has not been that the prophets were slain 
but that their messages fell upon deaf or unin- 
telligent ears. The injury to Jesus by the death 
penalty at the hands of His enemies was less than 
the injury done to the Cause for which He lived 
and died by those who called themselves His fol- 
lowers but who failed to understand His theology 
or obey His ethics. The crucifixion through mis- 
understanding is more tragic than the crucifixion on 
the cross. The prophetic religion of Jesus, the aim 
of which embraced the elimination of all exploita- 
tion of mankind, in a few generation fell into the 
control of the sons and successors of the exploiters 
against whom He had made war, and, in a few cen- 
turies, an exploiting ecclesiasticism flourished in 
His Name and under the cloak of His authorita- 
tive sanction. It is in more modern times that the 
inconsistency between the lives of Christians and 
the Founder's teachings have been felt as a reproach. 
The substitutionary cult idea of a vicarious atone- 
ment and saving union with a redeeming God, had 
come to be regarded as exempting His followers 
from living up to the standards which He set. "In- 
consistency" thereby became the normal and ac- 



150 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

cepted characteristic of the Churchman, just as it 
had been that of the adherent of the Jewish sacri- 
ficial cult. The ideal of holiness became ceremonial, 
sacramental, or a matter of a purifying "faith" 
apart from works. To this result the influence of 
the writings of Paul largely contributed. The an- 
cient sacrificial principle of the priestly code, which 
had been the principle attacked by all the prophets 
and Jesus Himself, was given the sanction of eccle- 
siastical authority when the sacraments were made 
the central feature of what had come to be a "sote- 
riological" cult. 

We have now to consider how this process was 
virtually accomplished within the life of the genera- 
tion that produced the New Testament writings in 
their present form. Four movements will receive 
our attention: (1) The reversion of the Jerusalem 
Church to Apocalyptism and the loss of the pro- 
phetic ethic. (2) The Hellenistic " deacons," as 
the perpetuators of Jesus' prophetic doctrine. (3) 
Paulinism and its incomplete synthesis of oppos- 
ing religious elements. (4) Ephesian Christianity 
which transformed the prophetic religion into a 
"Mystery Cult." 

I 

The process of the surrender of the distinctive 
prophetic character of the religion of Jesus began 
when His earliest interpreters substituted their 
own teachings about Jesus, for Jesus' teachings 
about God and the Reign of God. In place of His 



Followers of Jesus Create a Cult 151 

program they put one which He had condemned, 
namely, the Apocalyptic process of passive expect- 
ancy for a miracle to happen — (in His own expected 
appearance bringing the Kingdom of God to earth 
from the heavens). The process of bringing the 
free prophetic religion of Jesus under subjection 
to the Apocalyptic eschatology was chiefly the work 
of Simon Peter, the leader of the Twelve. The re- 
ligion which Peter founded after the death of Jesus 
was a special Apocalyptic-Messianic cult which 
sought to live at peace within the Jewish national 
cult, against which Jesus had begun a campaign 
of eradication. 

In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, Simon 
Peter appears as the leader of the followers of Jesus 
in connection with the appointment of Matthias. 
"That a man who but a few weeks before had re- 
peatedly and flagrantly denied his Master, should 
so soon recover the confidence of his associates, 
and even appear as their leader and spokesman, is, 
to say the least, surprising, and might well be 
doubted, were it not confirmed by the undisputed 
preeminence accorded to him on many other occa- 
sions throughout these early days." l The explana- 
tion of Peter's recovery probably lies in the fact 
that Peter (according to Paul, and the best critical 
opinion of to-day follows him) was the first to re- 
ceive the message of the risen Lord. This fact 
(confirmed by the subsequent experience of others) 
seems to have given him his position of leadership 

1 McGiffert, "Apostolic Age," p. 47. 



152 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

so that he became, in truth, the founder of the 
Church. 1 But the Church which was thus founded 
was not built upon the prophetic Messiahship of 
Jesus and His prophetic, aggressive program, but 
it was based upon the Messiahship of Jesus as a 
supernatural Figure of one Who had died and risen 
again and had been thereby "made Lord and Mes- 
siah" and given a seat on the throne of God which 
He was to occupy till He should return bringing 
the Kingdom with Him. In order to secure a fav- 
orable place in the coming of the Kingdom the 
Jews had only to repent (particularly of the sin 
of having crucified the Messiah) and be baptized 
in the Name of Jesus. With the reversion to the 
Apocalyptic eschatology the Apostles abandoned 
the prophetic ethic of Jesus and reverted to the 
ethic of the Jewish legalism and ceremonialism. 
This fact may be readily discerned from the fol- 
lowing description of McGiffert: 

Christianity, as they (the Apostles) understood it, 
was Judaism and nothing more. It was not a substi- 
stute for Judaism, nor even an addition or supplement 
to Judaism; it was not, indeed, in any way distinct from 
the national faith. It was simply the belief on the part 
of good and faithful Jews that Jesus was the Messiah, 
and it involved no disloyalty to Judaism, and no aban- 
donment of existing principles. For a Jew to believe 
in the Messiah whom they preached, was not necessarily 
to revise his conception of the nature of the Messianic 

1 Cf. Bacon's Monograph " Peter, the Founder of the Church," 
where this idea is fully developed. 



Followers of Jesus Create a Cult 1 53 

Kingdom and of the blessings to be enjoyed within it, 
nor, indeed, of the conditions of sharing those blessings. 
Peter says only, "Repent and be baptized in the Name 
of Jesus Christ" (Acts II: 38). Both here and in III: 19 
where he again exhorts his hearers to repent, the sin 

that is apparently in his mind is their crucifixion of Jesus. 

1 

He did not put repentance in the place of righteous- 
ness, nor did he suggest any revision of the prevailing 
theory of righteousness, making it consist in something 
else than the observance of the Jewish law. 2 

Baptism in the Name of Jesus Christ was, of course, 
a new thing to the Jews whom he addressed ; but baptism 
as such was entirely in line with the common Jewish rites 
of purification, and as a symbolical representation of 
cleansing from sins of which they repented, it must seem 
the most natural thing in the world to them. . . . 3 

A fuller reading of McGiffert only shows how 
complete was the reversion of the Apostles to Juda- 
ism and their abandonment of their Master's war- 
fare against the Jewish cult. Peter (who had denied 
allegiance to the Person of the Jesus Who was under 
condemnation for His blasphemy against Judaism 
and Pharisaism) — later renounced the Master's 
Gospel, while proclaiming in His name a new Gospel 
of the Person of Jesus as the one who was to come 
as the futuristic Inaugurator of the kingdom of the 
Jews. The prophetic Universalism and moral war- 
fare for God was completely abandoned, so that 

1 Op. cit. p. 58. 

2 Op. cit. p. 59. 
■ Ibid. 



154 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

both in precept and practice the Apostles went over 
to the adversaries of their Master — virtually cru- 
cifying His doctrine as the leaders of the Jewish 
cult had secured His physical crucifixion. They are 
left in security by the Sanhedrin and Pharisees 
join themselves to the followers of their late Ad- 
versary and Victim, 1 and have a voice in the affairs 
of His Church. 

Thus the new Church unconsciously abandoned 
the Cause for which Jesus gave His life, and the 
Apostles lost the prophetic succession. In place of 
it arose by degrees the doctrine of the Apostolic 
Succession whereby the errors of Judaism were 
fastened upon the Church of Him Who sought to 
be their destroyer. 

It is not. difficult to understand how this surpris- 
ing change came about without the slightest con- 
sciousness of disloyalty. In the lifetime of their 
Leader the Twelve were constantly showing that 
their pre-conceived ideas about the Kingdom were 
at variance with His. The Teacher was at great 
pains to show them wherein these inherited notions 
were wrong. They were so strongly under His 
personal influence that they dared violate provi- 
sions of the ceremonial law with His approval. 
But even to the time of His crucifixion they seemed 
to hold to the politico-eudemonistic conception of 
the Kingdom. This is borne out by their demoral- 
ization at the time of the crucifixion when the blow 

1 Acts 15:5. 



Followers of Jesus Create a Cult 155 

fell upon them. After that they were under the 
necessity of a reconstruction of their outlook. It 
was only natural that this reconstruction should 
embody a reversion to the main tenets of Judaism. 
Judaism was a racial cult — or a cult within a cult. 
The plan of salvation for the scribes and their dis- 
ciples was adherence to the law — to secure personal 
survival and happiness — and also to hasten the day 
of the Kingdom. In Judaism the Personal Mes- 
siah had receded into the background. The Twelve 
now gave to the Personal Messiah the central posi- 
tion. It is He — the Risen crucified Servant of God 
— Who was to bring in the Kingdom when men 
should be prepared to receive Him. It was per- 
sonal adherence to Him — plus the righteousness 
of the law, — that was to secure to those who ad- 
hered to Him — through baptism in His Name — a 
position of security and advantage in His Kingdom, 
so soon as it should come. 

How completely the immediate followers of Jesus 
in the early days of the Jerusalem Church had 
failed to grasp the prophetic universalism of Jesus 
is unconsciously revealed by Luke in the book of 
Acts. This is illustrated in the story of the Roman 
centurion Cornelius who was a "proselyte of the 
gate." 1 According to this account it required two 
visions and several seemingly miraculous coinci- 
dences to convince Peter of the call of the Gentiles, 
so that he could say "I see quite plainly that God 
has no favorites, but that He who reverences Him 

1 Acts 10, 



156 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

and lives a good life in any nation is welcomed by 
him" (verse 35). It required no less than the evi- 
dent descent of the Holy Spirit upon Cornelius and 
his Gentile associates to convince him that they 
should be baptized in the Name of Jesus (verse 48). 
News of this baptism of Gentiles reached Jerusalem 
before Peter's return so that when he came he was 
met by a rebuke. The author then goes on to tell 
that when Peter recited all the circumstances the 
Judaizers (or party of the circumcision) were con- 
vinced and even rejoiced, though their comment 
has a sound of amazed incredulity. "So God has 
actually allowed the Gentiles to repent and live." 1 

II 

But we may trace another channel through which 
the Gospel was preached to the Gentiles, reaching 
back to Jesus Himself. According to this, there 
were in the early Church at Jerusalem men of a more 
liberal and progressive type of religion than the 
Twelve, who seemed to have held the prophetic 
interpretation of religion. I refer to the Hellenists. 
These Greek-speaking Jewish Christians are men- 
tioned in the 6th Chapter of Acts as among the 
increasing number of disciples. They appear to 
protest against the neglect of the widows in the 
distribution of food from the common store. It is 
an interesting conjecture that they may have been 
among those who listened to the preaching of Jesus 
Himself. This may be the explanation of the al- 
1 Chapter 11: 18, Moffat's version. 



Followers of Jesus Create a Cult 157 

lusion to some "Greeks" who had come to worship 
at the Festival at Jerusalem and who sought through 
Philip to obtain an interview with Jesus. 1 The 
author refers to them as "Hellenes," but as they 
had come to worship at the temple it is far more 
likely that they were "Hellenists," that is, Gre- 
cian-born Jews rather than Greek proselytes. The 
author of the Fourth Gospel does not tell us whether 
these men ever succeeded in obtaining their request. 
But he may have been using a documentary source 
which he mutilated in transcribing. 

The striking thing about these Hellenists is that 
they were concerned with the immediate needs of 
the unfortunate. In this they seem to have been 
in contrast with the Twelve who seemed to feel 
that the distribution of rations was beneath their 
dignity. The seven Hellenists who are appointed 
to that task accept it cheerfully. Thereby they 
seem to show a clearer appreciation of the mean- 
ing of the law of service; but in addition to this 
they also found opportunity to preach the Gospel, 
and their type of Gospel seems not to have been 
the Apocalyptic but the prophetic. In the speech 
attributed to Stephen in the Acts, the long intro- 
duction is probably a free composition by the author 
of the book. It is the usual patriotic rehearsal of 
Jewish history, but at the end there is a change of 
manner. The prophetic note is introduced. Per- 
haps the author is dealing with a special document, 
or his matter may have come from Philip — one of 

1 John 12: 20. 



158 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

the seven whom Luke met at Caesarea. A pro- 
phetic fragment occurs in Chapter 7, verse 42 : " Did 
you offer me victims and sacrifices during the forty 
years in the desert, O house of Israel?" Another 
prophetic citation reechoes the prophetic hostility 
against the temple. " And yet the Most High does 
not dwell in houses made by hands. As the prophet 
says, 

Heaven in my throne, 

the earth is a footstool for my feet! 
What house would you build me? 

saith the Lord. 
On what spot could I settle? 
Did not my hand make all this?" 1 

He next addresses his hearers in terms nearly 
akin to those employed by Jesus in His denuncia- 
tion of the Pharisees. They and their fathers have 
always resisted the Spirit, persecuting the Spirit's 
messengers, the prophets. As the fathers have 
slain the prophets so the children of their slayers 
have murdered the Just One. 

In the story of Philip, another of the " Seven," 
it may not be without significance that he is repre- 
sented in his discourse with the Ethiopian eunuch 
as having interpreted the "Suffering Servant" of 
Isaiah as applied to the Messiahship of Jesus. This, 
as we have seen, was the sense in which Jesus under- 
stood His own Messiahship, and contrasts with the 
Apocalyptic Messiah of the Petrine discourses in 

1 Acts 7: 49; Moffat's version. 



Followers of Jesus Create a Cult 159 

Acts. That there was a radical difference between 
the Gospel of the Twelve and the Gospel of the Hel- 
lenists, and that the former was reactionary and 
the latter true to the prophetic message of Jesus, 
is borne out by the fact recorded by Luke that a 
severe persecution broke out in Jerusalem against 
the adherents of Stephen (who was himself the first 
martyr), and resulted in their being scattered abroad 
whereas the Apostles were left unmolested by the 
authorities. 

It was this Hellenistic or liberal Christianity 
which Philip preached among the Samaritans. 
Others carried their Gospel as far as Phoenicia and 
Cyprus and Antioch, as we are told in the nth 
Chapter of Acts. At Antioch some of them desig- 
nated as "Cypriotes" and "Cyrenians" began to 
preach the Gospel to the Greeks also. 1 It was at 
Antioch that the adherents of this movement were 
called "Christians." Hitherto they had been re- 
garded as "Nazarenes" or a sect of Jews. It was 
to the Christian Church in Antioch that Paul (Saul) 
was brought by Barnabas and remained as a guest 
for a year. Here he was in the midst of liberalized 
Hellenistic Christians, and perhaps their influence 
upon his Gospel, in the trend toward universalism, 
was far greater than he himself, or the students of 
Paulinism, have realized. In the local Church at 
Antioch the religious leaders or ministers were 
known as "prophets and teachers." This may be 
also significant of their appreciation of the pro- 

1 See Moffat's version, footnote, p. 161. 



160 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

phetic type of religion. It was from them that Paul 
and Barnabas received their commission to go forth, 
preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom to Jew and 
Gentile alike. They thus became Apostles, liter- 
ally, "men who are sent forth." Their commission 
was accompanied by prayer and the laying on of 
hands. This latter practice seems to have accom- 
panied special acts of intercession as in the other 
practice of the laying on of hands upon the sick. 1 
It appears to have been so incidental an occurrence 
in the mind of Paul that he nowhere refers to it in 
his extant writings. It was an old Jewish custom 
for the purpose of localizing prayer upon those for 
whom it was offered. 

It has sometimes been said by admirers of Paul 
that had it not been for his universalism the move- 
ment inaugurated by Jesus would have remained 
a sect of Judaism with possibly a very brief history. 
An appreciation of the movement of Hellenistic 
Christianity as exhibited at Antioch will show that 
this claim on behalf of Paul is exaggerated. 

Ill 

In contrast with the "Judaizing Christians" — 
which included James the brother of the Lord and 
the Twelve, Paul's Gospel is progressive and ex- 
pansive. It contained elements antagonistic to the 
Jewish narrow particularism. Its influence has 
been enduring and has been on the side of the great 
reformatory movements in the Christian Church, 

1 Mk. 16: 18. 



Followers of Jesus Create a Cult 161 

but all such movements, including the so-called Re- 
formation itself, have stopped short of the prophetic 
Christian reform. At the present time the prophetic 
movement among Christian thinkers feels the need 
of going behind Paulinism to the doctrine of Jesus 
Himself. Compared with the Gospel of Jesus, as 
recovered by modern historical and critical methods, 
the Gospel of Paul is inadequate. It is impossible 
to regard him as the leader of the present forward 
movement of social Christianity. 

The religious movement of the Judaizing Chris- 
tians was that of a narrow cult, restricted to men of 
Jewish birth or proselytes, who in addition to the 
practice of Judaism accepted Jesus as the Messiah 
Who was to come. In contrast to this Paul's ad- 
mission of the Gentiles to membership in the cult, 
his break with and rejection of legalism, and his 
claim to a call to service directly from God and 
independently of human mediators (the Apostles), 
makes him, by comparison, a man of "prophetic 
tendencies." But in contrast to the theology and 
ethical universalism of Jesus, he remains a conserv- 
ative and a reactionary. It is as such that his 
influence is reckoned to-day among the true leaders 
of modern Christianity, those whose watchword 
is " Back to Christ." The chief indictment against 
him is that, in spite of his acceptance of the Gentiles, 
his religion remains that of a cult. His early rab- 
binism with its doctrine of predestination has a 
stronger determining influence upon his thought 
than has the prophetic literature of his race and the 



1 62 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

prophetic career of his Master. He frankly lacks 
an appreciation of the historic Jesus as a Prophet 
and Teacher, and though emphasizing it less than 
the Twelve, he still gives his adherence to the Apoc- 
alyptic scheme of salvation. He abandons the 
prophetic Messianic conception of a universal, 
redeemed community co-extensive with mankind 
and living a normal life here upon the earth. In 
place of this his eschatology is burdened with " other- 
worldliness." 

In place of the historic Jesus he gives his alle- 
giance to the Man from Heaven Whom he seems to 
identify in his thought with the "Spirit." Sal- 
vation remains an object of quest for the individual 
in contrast to the injunction of Jesus to desist from 
seeking a separate individual salvation and in place 
of it to devote one's life to establishing the universal 
community of the saved. Within the cult he pre- 
sents a beautiful ideal of loving social relationship. 
The members of the cult are members of each other 
because they are all members of the Body of Christ. 
His doctrine of the Church was broad in relation 
to Judaism and narrow in comparison with the 
prophetic universalism. In fact we may charac- 
terize Paul as the New Testament Ezekiel. His 
immediate success was due to the fact of his syn- 
thesizing elements derived from different contem- 
porary movements, but this fact will also militate 
against the permanence of his movement, especially 
in the future. 

Certain modern writers, among them especially 



Followers 0} Jesus Create a Cult 163 

Percy Gardner (in his "Religious Experience of 
St. Paul") have pointed out the fact that St. Paul's 
religion was modeled on the pattern of the contem- 
porary "Mystery Cults." 

In the Graeco-Roman world including the Near 
East at the beginning of our era there was a depressed 
and pessimistic outlook upon the destiny of man- 
kind taken as whole. Humanity was seen as strug- 
gling against a threatening and adverse fate. This 
was the pessimistic ground-thought of the Apoca- 
lypses. Paul's view that all men rested under the 
curse inherited from the first ancestor of the race 
found its echo in the prevalent philosophy. Jesus' 
doctrine of the value of the individual man and of 
the Fatherhood of God and His belief in the nearness 
of the Kingdom was in marked contrast to the mood 
of mankind in His day. The Church accepted the 
current assumption that mankind was inevitably 
lost without some kind of miraculous intervention. 
The Church itself professed to hold the secret of 
deliverance. In this it found itself in harmony with 
the program of the Mystery Cults, many of which 
were its contemporaries. 1 The Mysteries have 
three notable characteristics: 

First, all have some rites of purification, whether cere- 
monial or moral, through which the Mystae have to pass. 
Second, They are all mysteries of communion with some 
deity, who through them comes into relation with his 

1 Among these Mysteries we may enumerate those of Tammuz, 
Attis, Isis, Mithras, Sandan, Sabazius, Cybele, Orpheus, and 
Demeter and Persephone. 
13 



164 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

votaries. Third, all extend their views beyond the pres- 
ent life to that which is to come, and secure for the ini- 
tiated a happy reception in the world which lies beyond 
the grave. 1 

In the mysteries of Cybele the initiate enacts a 
ritualistic drama in which he symbolically shares 
the fate of Persephone in going to the under world 
after which he enjoys a symbolic return to life in a 
figurative resurrection to the life of the upper world. 
This is somewhat analogous to St. Paul's concep- 
tion of baptism whereby the immersion in the water 
symbolizes burial with Christ and the emergence 
from the water the resurrection into a new life. 
The same idea is enacted on a larger scale in the sor- 
rowing and fasting observance of Good Friday and 
the joyous Feast of Easter. The thought is ex- 
pressed in the Collect for Easter Even. 

Because the earlier Christians could point to the 
death and resurrection of Jesus as a recent well- 
attested historic fact, the thought of union with 
Him whether by faith or by the sacrament was most 
adaptable to the soteriological plan of the Mystery 
Cults, which promised to their adherents the priv- 
ilege of reenacting in their own lives the experience 
of the Mystery god. Because it satisfied most ade- 
quately the felt longings of the men of the Roman 
Empire the Christian Church as a mystic society 
soon triumphed over all its rivals. But in thus 
constituting itself a mystery religion Christianity 

1 Percy Gardner, "The Religious Experience of St. Paul," 
p. 69. 



Followers of Jesus Create a Cult 165 

was departing from the program of its Founder. 
In contrast to His preaching which laid but little 
emphasis upon His own Person and laid the most 
emphatic stress upon His teaching about the King- 
dom, the Church laid but little emphasis upon His 
teaching and laid an almost exclusive stress upon 
His Person and Office as a redeeming God. 

It is clear that Jesus in condemning the cult of 
the Pharisees and the temple cult condemned the 
underlying cult principle, and it is certain that He 
never intended to found a new cult with Himself as 
the center. In fact, He seems to warn against that 
as a danger. 1 In spite of this warning all His earlier 
followers, with the possible exception of a few Hel- 
lenists, ran into the very danger, and so the pre- 
diction of Jesus has already been fulfilled, "Many 
will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not 
prophesy in your name? Did we not cast out de- 
mons in your name? Did we not perform many 
miracles in your name?' " To whom His Spirit 
declares, " I never knew you; depart from my pres- 
ence, you workers of iniquity." This testimony 
is confirmed by the testimony of three careful schol- 
ars, Professors Harnack, Lake and Hatch. 2 

In spite of his great services the influence of Paul, 
like that of Ezekiel, remains on the side of those 
who restrict religion to a community less than the 
total brotherhood of man. This restriction of the 
community to a cult is fatal, no matter how beauti- 

1 Mt. 7: 21-23. 

2 "With regard to the way in which He worked and gathered 



1 66 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

ful the community life of the cult may be. Paul's 
conception of the Church leaves nothing to be de- 
sired in respect of the relation of its members to 
God and to each other. Josiah Royce in his " Prob- 
lem of Christianity" has taken the Pauline concep- 
tion and made it fundamental in his development 
of the idea of the " Beloved Community." Royce 
feels that in regard to this teaching Paul made a 
more important contribution to Christian thought 
than any that is found in the teachings of Jesus. 
Royce plainly never had a clear conception of the 
thought of the Founder of Christianity or he would 
have seen that in Jesus' preaching of the Reign of 
God every element that he admires in the Pauline 
idea of the Church is present and that besides, 
whereas Paul's " Church" remains restricted to 
the elect who are to be rescued out of the present 
world, Jesus regards the Community as universal, 
as all-inclusive, embracing the life in time as well 
as in eternity. 

disciples, the distinctiveness of His Person and preaching comes 
out very clearly. He sought to found no sect or school. He 
laid down no outward rules for adhesion to Himself. His aim 
was to bring men to God and to prepare them for God's King- 
dom." (Harnack, "Mission and Expansion of Christianity," 
vol. I, p. 37-) 

"Jesus did not say that only those who followed Him would 
be admitted (to the Kingdom of God) and He did not deny the 
existence of righteous in Israel who needed no physician. The 
claim to have exclusive right of entry into the Kingdom of Heaven 
— the essence of ecclesiasticism in the bad sense of the word — 
was perhaps made by the scribes, or at least by some of them, 
but not by Jesus, though Christians have in this respect not 



Followers of Jesus Create a Cult 167 

IV 

It is of the nature of the cult that it should be 
chiefly occupied with the person of the redeeming 
God and with the question of how saving relations 
with Him may be won and maintained. The de- 
velopment of the cult assures an absorption in 
Christological speculation. The loyal devotees of 
the cult-God will devote themselves to the exten- 
sion of His claims to power and exaltation. The 
next step in the strengthening of the cult idea is 
found in the Fourth Gospel. 

The Church at Ephesus produced this Gospel 
which is the Gospel of the cult par excellence. It 
is at once a mystic Gospel and a mystery religion. 
The portrait of Jesus, while employing historic 
materials, is composed on the superhistorical as- 
sumption that Jesus, the cult-God, existed from 
eternity, was the Agent of God in creation, the 
Source of all light and enlightenment, and that 

always followed His example." (Lake, "Stewardship of Faith," 

P- 330 

"He never asked His disciples to trust in Himself rather than 
in God; nor did He demand of them faith in His Own Person, 
though He felt He had been divinely appointed to proclaim the 
coming of the Kingdom of God and to prepare men for it. He 
fully believed that He was the Messiah but He did not make 
forgiveness or salvation dependent upon belief in His Messiah- 
ship. It was enough for Him if He could persuade men to re- 
pent of their sins, to bring forth the fruits of righteousness, and 
to live in trust toward their Heavenly Father, looking forward 
expectantly to the coming of the Kingdom." (W. H. P. Hatch, 
"The Pauline Idea of Faith," pp. 24-25, cf. also, p. 22.) 



1 68 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

He came into the world in order that those who had 
the insight to accept Him might receive from Him 
the right of being children of God. This concep- 
tion is based on the theology which falls short of 
the universalism of Jesus, and it places an inter- 
pretation upon His Mission and Person which He 
Himself would not have recognized. 

In thus turning the stream of Christianity into the 
channels of a mystery cult, Paul and the author or 
authors of the Ephesian Gospel were quite uncon- 
sciously taking the first step in the development 
which soon transformed the free emancipating 
universalistic Gospel of God and humanity into an 
exploiting ecclesiasticism, the most stupendous in 
the history of the world, the corrupting influence 
of which survives to the present time. 



Cult Becomes an Exploiting Ecclesiasticism 169 



CHAPTER X 

THE CULT BECOMES AN EXPLOITING 
ECCLESIASTICISM 

Hitherto we have been discussing the theological 
ideas which led the followers of Jesus to regard 
themselves as a cult. We are now to consider the 
manner in which the cult became organized exter- 
nally. The Church in Jerusalem under the leader- 
ship of the Apostles adopted a form of communism. 
It was not a communism of productive co-operation 
but a communism of "consumption." The ad- 
herents converted their land and capital into ready 
cash which was used to buy provisions for all the 
members of the community. The Parousia was 
believed to be so near that the Lord's appearance 
was counted on before the common store should 
have been entirely used. As we have already seen 
the distribution was at first badly organized so that 
weaker members of the community suffered. It 
was to remedy this abuse that the " Seven" were 
appointed a committee to have the matter in charge. 

The Seven were soon scattered by persecution. 
As might be expected, the community was soon re- 
duced to poverty owing to its miscalculations. 
When Paul visited the Church in Jerusalem in order 
to win its approval of his mission to the Gentiles, 
the Apostles, in giving him the right hand of fellow- 
ship, asked him to confine his ministrations to the 



170 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

Gentiles, and added a request that he should "re- 
member the poor," that is to say, that he should 
send contributions to the impoverished Church in 
Jerusalem. This request he diligently observed. 
At this time the Apostles did not compel Titus, a 
Greek who accompanied Paul, to submit to cir- 
cumcision. But the Judaizers did not abide by 
what Paul considered their agreement to a division 
of the field. Hence his indignation when he dis- 
covered that the Jerusalem Church was sending out 
emissaries who were attempting to make Jewish 
proselytes of his Gentile converts. The Judaizers 
evidently did not consider the Pauline Christians as 
possessing a " regular" standing. How did Paul 
regard the Judaizers? He rejected their claims to 
authority to impose their standards upon his ad- 
herents. But he still regarded them as members of 
the Christian community, of the "Body of Christ," 
and therefore he sought to discharge toward them 
the duties of brotherly assistance and to win their 
recognition and hold it. These two motives united 
in imparting diligence to his campaign for raising 
what must have been a large offering which he took 
to them in person. His Epistles contain several 
allusions to this contribution. 

In sending out the Twelve Jesus had restricted 
them to the acceptance of hospitality, had warned 
them against accepting money. But now, instead 
of seeking to be self-supporting, the Apostles be- 
came dependent upon the contributions of the 
Church at large, especially upon the generosity of 



Cult Becomes an Exploiting Ecclesiasticism 171 

the Gentile Churches. In writing to the Corin- 
thians Paul suggests that they adopt the arrange- 
ment which he has already made for the Churches 
at Galatia. They are to take a weekly offering 
from every one of the members of the community. 
When the sum has become sufficiently large a com- 
mittee with proper credentials is to take the sum to 
Jerusalem, and he suggests that if it is large enough 
he himself will accompany them. 1 In his letter to 
the Romans he tells them that he is about to leave 
for Jerusalem on an errand to the "saints," which 
is to carry the contribution from the Churches in 
Macedonia and Achaia. He represents these of- 
ferings as a debt which the Gentiles owe to the 
Jewish Church because of the spiritual benefit 
which that Church has mediated to them. It 
would now seem as though the Jerusalem Church 
were perilously near exploiting the Gospel, although 
the contributions were not levied but were wholly 
voluntary. At any rate, we have the beginnings of 
a clerical caste subsisting on the offerings of the 
laity who work for their living. 

I 

In the Gentile Churches the ministers of the con- 
gregation were at first self-supporting. Paul ac- 
cepted the hospitality of the Churches, among whom 
he made a short stay, but in Ephesus where he 
stayed for two years, he supported himself by work- 
ing at his trade of tent-making and earned enough 

*I Cor. 16:1-4. 



172 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

to assist his fellow ministers. 1 In the organization 
of the Gentile Churches the ministry was not paid, 
— all of the. offerings were taken for the poor of the 
local congregation and the share which was sent to 
Jerusalem. The organization of the ministry was 
"charismatic," that is to say, those who ministered 
to the local churches or to the Church at large re- 
ceived their appointment by reason of recognized 
qualifications derived by charismatic gifts com- 
municated by the Spirit. Paul enumerates these 
charismatic officers as first "Apostles," that is, 
those who were sent out as missionaries; secondly, 
"Prophets," these seem to have been local minis- 
ters in Antioch but they also belonged to the "itin- 
erant ministry"; thirdly, "Teachers," of whom the 
same may be said. In addition to these, there 
were the following local ministers: "Healers," 
"Helpers," "Administrators," and "Speakers in 
tongues." 2 

The "administrators" were those who in the 
pastoral Epistles are designated as "Bishops," that 
is, "overseers," and the "helpers," those who are 
called "deacons," that is "servants," who assisted 
the Bishops in the distribution of the offerings to the 
poor. In the pastoral Epistles, which were proba- 
bly written near the end of the first century, special 
stress is laid upon the importance of the character 
of these men who had the handling of the funds of 
the community. They must not be polygamists, 

x Acts 20: 34. 
2 I Cor. 12:28. 



Cult Becomes an Exploiting Ecclesiasticism 173 

or excessive drinkers, or avaricious, or ''pilferers." 1 
In the Didache or "Teaching of the Twelve Apos- 
tles," which is perhaps not more than a decade 
later in date than the pastoral Epistles, we have a 
picture of the existing simple order of the Church. 
The itinerant ministry is given the first position of 
honor, but many restrictions are placed upon those 
who might enter the community claiming to be 
Apostles and Prophets. The bishop is appointed 
by the congregation and in addition to administer- 
ing the poor fund he also presides at the Eucharist 
in the absence of one of the itinerant ministers. 
He is, however, restricted to the use of simple litur- 
gical prayers, whereas the prophet is allowed to 
"pray as much as he will." 

It is apparent that many impostors and exploiters 
must have foisted themselves upon unsuspecting 
local churches, because of the minute instructions 
given whereby the true may be distinguished from 
the false. The visiting Apostle, till proved guilty, 
is to be received "as the Lord," but if he stays and 
attempts to live on the community longer than 
two days his claims are fraudulent, he is a "false 
prophet." He is an exploiter if he asks for money or 
"orders a meal." In any case, when he leaves he 
is not to take anything with him beyond sufficient 
bread to last until he reaches the next local church. 
This provision sees to it that the itinerant minister 
carries out the instructions which Jesus gave the 
Twelve in sending them out on their preaching 

1 1 Tim. 3 ; Titus, 1 . 



174 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

mission. In Chapter 13, however, seemingly later 
provisions are introduced. They seem to have 
been incorporated in the interests of the prophetic 
ministry. In them it is provided that the prophets 
and teachers may settle permanently in the com- 
munity. Their support is also liberally provided 
for and so the way is paved for the rise of a caste of 
professional ministers depending upon the offerings 
of the congregation hitherto intended for the use of 
the poor. " Every first fruit, then, of the products 
of the wine press and threshing floor, of oxen and 
sheep, thou shalt take and give to the prophet, for 
they are your High Priests." "If thou makest a 
baking of bread, take the first of it and give accord- 
ing to the commandment. In like manner when 
thou openest a jar of wine or oil, take the first of it 
and give to the prophet; and of money and cloth- 
ing and every possession, take the first, as seems 
right to thee, and give according to the command- 
ment." The "prophets" evidently expect to live 
well. Their claims are put before those of the poor, 
as is implied by the statement "But if ye have no 
prophets, give it to the poor." It was perhaps 
owing to a deterioration in the character of the 
itinerant ministry and the restrictions which were 
placed upon its members in consequence, that the 
disappearance of the itinerant ministry claiming 
charismatic or prophetic gifts became inevitable, 
and the ascendency of a local administrative organ- 
ization, consisting of teachers, shepherds, bishops 
and deacons, became officially established. 



Cult Becomes an Exploiting Ecclesiastic ism 175 

The "elders" do not appear as a clerical caste 
till the next period of development. This title, as 
Sohm and Lowrie have pointed out, was a title of 
age rather than of office. In the Jewish Church, 
however, the older men of exemplary character 
were recognized as holding positions of judicial, or 
at least of advisory weight. Their importance is 
recognized in frequent Old Testament references. 1 
It is doubtless true that the bishops were selected 
from their number. 

II 

In the next period of development the "oligar- 
chical" or many-headed voluntary group of elders 
or bishops, which was self-supporting and which 
gave its services freely, became a local hierarchy of 
three steps with a single local bishop at the head. 
An element which contributed to the strength and 
rigidity of the official organization grew out of the 
felt need to deal with the divisive and schismatic 
tendencies which arose from the freedom of the 
charismatic organization permitting as it did the 
rise within the group of "heresies" — the literal 
meaning of which is "differences of opinion." 

The seriousness of these differences of opinion 
was that they led to divisions and hostilities within 
the community, and the method taken to combat 
, them was not that of friendly discussion and recip- 
rocal education, but the less Christlike method of 
mutual recrimination and finally of judicial con- 

1 e. g. in Lev. 4: 15; Deut. 29: 10; 31: 28; 32: 7; I Sam. 30: 26. 



176 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

demnation of views not acceptable to the ascendant 
parties who were able to impose penalties, the chief 
of which was excommunication. We know of St. 
Paul's conflict with the Judaizers. Many of these 
rejected his claim to the Apostleship. Paul sought 
to safeguard against their disturbing influence by 
warning his churches, as in his address to the pres- 
byters at Ephesus, 1 that "grievous wolves would 
get in among them and not spare the flock." The 
Jewish Christians perpetuated their controversy 
against Paulinism in the so-called "Clementine 
Homilies" which plainly reject Paul's claims to 
Apostleship and take him to task for his criticisms 
of Peter in his Epistle to the Galatians. The Jew- 
ish Church was ultimately excommunicated by the 
Gentile Catholic Church. It continued its exist- 
ence under the Patriarch of Jerusalem till the fourth 
century. It perpetuated the Apocalyptic concep- 
tion of Jesus as the Christus futurus . They rejected 
all the later Christologies, so that in time its con- 
servatism placed it in the class of heretics from 
the point of view of the later established orthodoxy. 
In his advocacy of a rigid organization of the 
local church under a monarchical episcopate, Igna- 
tius, who was the religious enthusiast of this change, 
had in mind efficiency of management, especially in 
dealing with the schismatics. The final test of the 
permanence of this organization was made in the 
conflict with Montanism. Montanism was a Gen- 
tile revival of the early Apocalyptic expectation of 

1 Acts 20: 17 ff. 



Cult Becomes an Exploiting Ecclesiasticism 177 

the imminent coming of Christ upon the clouds. 
The Church had by its organization begun to pro- 
vide for its future continuance on earth as a per- 
manent institution. Its adherents had regard for 
its material interests and for extending its influence. 
To the Montanists all this seemed futile in view of 
the destruction of the existing world order which 
they so soon expected. They condemned the 
"worldliness" of the growing cult and rejected its 
official ministry, claiming to possess a charismatic 
ministry and prophetic succession of their own. 
With their downfall the organization of the Catholic 
Church was assured on a permanent basis. The 
significance of this fact, it was the service of Ritschl 
to have pointed out. 

Ill 

From the time of Ignatius on we find marks of 
a growing "clerical consciousness." Ignatius him- 
self the bishop of Antioch is not restrained by any 
false modesty in exalting the position of the bishop 
of the local church to one of equivalence to the 
office of Christ, as a vicar of God. The presbyters 
he regards as the successors of the Apostles. To 
the church at Smyrna he writes: "See that ye 
follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the 
Father, and the presbytery as ye would the Apos- 
tles, and reverence the deacons as being the insti- 
tution of God." 1 Here we have a clear-cut class 

1 Ad. Smyr. C. VIII and XII— Quoted by Dr. Allen, "Christian 
Institutions," p. 62. 



178 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

consciousness, not merely of the distinction be- 
tween the clerical and the lay, but also of the class 
division within the clerical order into higher and 
inferior clergy. All this seems to indicate the influ- 
ence of the Roman bureaucracy and complicated 
class division. 

The idea was emphasized by the Church archi- 
tecture and in the forms of worship. There was 
the bishop's throne ; the officiating presbyter stood 
on the top step of the Altar, and the deacons on 
the step below. Each order had its especial vest- 
ments, their splendor corresponding to the rank of 
the privileged wearer. 

By this time the clergy received an income, partly 
in kind (a portion of that which had formerly been 
given to the poor), and also presents in money. The 
church life had become so elaborated that all the time 
of the clergy was required and no opportunity left 
them to support themselves as had been the custom of 
the earlier time. In fact, it was now considered 
beneath the dignity of the ministry to earn their 
own livings by productive labor. That which St. 
Paul had commended in himself, namely, his self- 
support, by his own hands, is now considered 
reprehensible. "Worldly callings" were condemned 
as incompatible with the highest devotion to the 
service of God in the church. The growing influ- 
ence of the clergy offered multiplied opportunities 
for exploitation which logically enough developed a 
tendency toward corruption. 



Cult Becomes an Exploiting Ecclesiasticism 179 

IV 

As the cult grew in influence and importance and 
as the clerical body increased its influence, it offered 
such opportunities for a brilliant career that men of 
ability and ambition were tempted to enter the 
field. These men by their gifts of organization were 
able to still further strengthen the power and pres- 
tige of the Church and its ruling orders. In select- 
ing their bishops it became a principle to choose "a 
man of weight in the community," so that men of 
wealth and members of the nobility came to have a 
prior claim upon the episcopal office. The local 
bishop became elevated to preside over the diocese. 

Episcopal prestige owes a permanent debt to 
Cyprian. Before becoming a bishop himself Cyp- 
rian had been a successful Roman lawyer. He was 
a member of the upper class and a man of wealth 
either by inheritance or as the result of a successful 
legal practice. It may be said without exaggera- 
tion that Cyprian accomplished more toward the 
separation of the church from the mind and pro- 
gram of Jesus than any of his predecessors, for he 
was a most efficient agent in binding the Body of 
Christ by the fetters of a rigid ecclesiasticism and 
handing it over to that very hierarchical system 
which the prophets and Jesus had given their lives 
to combat. Yet he was not conscious of any in- 
consistency or disloyalty, for he was only conscious 
of loyal adherence to the Christian cult. That 
cult had already grown so far away from the basic 
14 



180 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

principles of Christ that it was possible to be a good 
Catholic and a false Christian (i.e. not a "Chris- 
tian" used in the sense of a true adherent of the 
doctrine of Jesus), without being conscious of the 
inconsistency. 

It was perhaps natural that Cyprian should fail 
to recognize that Jesus had utterly condemned the 
Jewish hierarchy, but he not only failed to do that, 
he affirmed the opposite. He assumed such an 
original harmony between Christ and the Jewish 
priesthood that he held Him to be its Founder. He 
calls the Jewish priests "our predecessors." In 
fact, he takes over the whole conception of the Jew- 
ish hierarchy as developed in the Old Testament, 
even in its extreme late form, which was at the 
opposite pole from prophetism, as the prototype of 
the organization of the Christian Church. He 
thus places the Christian Church squarely in the 
range of the missiles of wrath which the prophets 
and especially Jesus had hurled at the exclusive 
monopolistic and exploiting temple cult. Cyprian's 
method was that which had become commonly em- 
ployed by church leaders after the third century. 
"As the churches became stocked with every kind 
of sacred ceremony, and as they carefully devel- 
oped priestly, sacrificial and sacramental ideas, 
people began to grow reckless in applying the letter 
of the Old Testament ceremonial laws to the ar- 
rangements of the Christian organization and wor- 
ship. In setting itself up as a legalistic body, the 
Church had recourse to the Old Testament in a way 



Cult Becomes an Exploiting Ecclesiasticism 181 

that Paul had severely censured ; it fell back on the 
law though all the while it blamed the Jews and 
declared that their observance of the law was 
quite illicit. In the practice of the church, . . . 
people employed the Old Testament, in order to 
get a basis for usages which they considered indis- 
pensable. For a purpose of this kind the New 
Testament was of little use." l 

Cyprian was indeed the most serious offender. 
By temperament and training a legalist he identi- 
fied Christianity with the legalism of the " priestly 
code" — a sacerdotal forgery made by an exploiting 
hierarchy to further its own interests by means of 
the falsification of history. Cyprian finds the 
priestly myth of Korah, Dathan and Abiram as 
useful in illustrating God's indignation against those 
who rejected the bishops. From this the character 
of his theology as that of the priestly type and as 
foreign to the theology of Jesus, may be clearly in- 
ferred. He says distinctly that the Christian 
bishop is the inheritor of the Jewish High Priest- 
hood ! Each diocese is " the congregation of Israel." 
"The election of a bishop in the presence of the 
representatives of the diocese is made in accord- 
ance with the law of Moses." The bishop inherits 
the old hierarchical judicial authority. Nay more, 
the bishop is judge in Christ's stead. Contempt of 
the bishop's government is condemned in the law 
and in the books of Samuel. Even though the 

1 Harnack, "Mission and Expansion of Christianity," vol. I, 
p. 287. 



1 82 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

same faith and worship are maintained as that of 
the bishop, yet one who invades his office is guilty 
of the veritable sin of Korah. The laws about the 
High Priest were ultimately intended to apply to 
the bishops and since the failure of the Jewish hier- 
archy apply to them alone. Cyprian goes so far as 
to claim the authority both of St. Paul and of our 
Lord Himself for this view. 1 

Cyprian finds in the presbytery a continuation of 
the Levitic tribe (the inferior clergy), " living on 
the offerings of the people, as their predecessors on 
the tithes, devoted day and night to sacrifice and 
prayer." 2 

In Cyprian, quite unconsciously to him and to 
his contemporaries, the Apostasy of the Catholic 
Church from the theology of Jesus and from the 
social doctrine of the Kingdom with its democratic 
implications derived from the doctrine of the in- 
finite worth of the common man, reaches its official 
completion. The Church of Christ is now organ- 
ized and ready to be handed over to the enemies of 
Christ, the exploiters of their brethren. 

The influence of the bishops was naturally the 
greatest at the great centers. The preeminence of 
the Bishop of Rome was made possible by the op- 
portunities offered by the imperial city. It was an 
office to be coveted by the ambitious. The bishops 
and deacons of Rome handled large sums of money 
without any control of the finances by the govern- 

1 See Archbishop Benson, " Cyprian," p. 34. 

2 Cf . Benson, Loc. cit. 



Cult Becomes an Exploiting Ecclesiasticism 183 

ment or by the church itself. As might have been 
expected there were many defalcations in conse- 
quence. 

V 

If the main thesis of this book has been estab- 
lished, that the religion of Jesus was the full reali- 
zation of the religion of the insurgent prophecy, if 
His religion was the militant foe of exploiting 
priestly rule as well as the partisan of all the ex- 
ploited and oppressed, then we are forced to the 
startling conclusion that even before the days of 
Constantine the Christian Church had strangled 
and suppressed the Gospel of its Founder. Had the 
Spirit of Jesus as revealed in His teachings been in- 
deed the guiding influence of the Church, it could 
never have exploited in its own interests or made 
an alliance with an Empire founded upon the prac- 
tice of exploitation as the very life-blood of its ex- 
istence. But the Church as legalized according to 
the type of the Jewish theocracy, under the per- 
sonal rule of monarchic bishops, archbishops, and 
ultimately of popes, was admirably adapted to 
exploit on its own account and enter into an alli- 
ance of exploitation with the imperial power. 
"These were the Christians whom Constantine de- 
clared to be the support of his throne — people who 
clung to the bishops with submissive faith and who 
would not resist their divinely appointed authority ! 
The Christianity that triumphed was the Chris- 
tianity of a blind faith, which Celsus had depicted. 



184 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

When would a state ever have shown any practical 
interest in any other kind of religion?" 1 

The triumph of Christianity in the guise of the 
established church of the empire was at the same 
time the defeat of all that Jesus Christ stood for in 
religion. Under Constantine the Church reached 
the climax of Christological elevation in exalting 
its Founder to the rank of equality with the Eternal 
God, but in so doing it banished Him and the Cause 
of the Kingdom from the earth making Him tran- 
scendent and remote from the world which He had 
come to save. At one stroke the Church deified 
its Lord and disobeyed Him. In one voice it de- 
clared Him by conciliar authority to be "Very God 
of Very God" and while offering its adoration be- 
trayed Him into the hands of High Priests and 
rulers who crucified His doctrine upon a jeweled 
cross surmounted by the imperial crown. 

VI 

From the time of the alliance between the church 
and the Prince of the Gentiles shameless exploita- 
tion strode forward with splendid mien. The 
bishops used the loyalty of their submissive people 
to direct a similar loyalty to the parvenu Emperor. 
In return for their (im) moral support the bishops and 
the other clergy and the congregations committed 
to their charge received most generous financial, 
legal and social recognition. The clergy and the 
Church property were exempted from taxation — a 

1 Harnack, op. cit. vol. I, p. 223. 



Cult Becomes an Exploiting Ecclesiasticism 185 

great privilege (and a great mistake for us moderns 
to have repeated). The rich endowments of the 
pagan shrines were confiscated and given to the 
Church. The temples of the pagan gods were given 
over to the Church as places of worship, though the 
nature of that worship continued fundamentally 
more pagan than Christian. The Church received 
generous donations from the Emperor himself and 
from private individuals. It became a large holder 
of real estate and was given the right to receive be- 
quests. Its land and its capital continued to accu- 
mulate. The clergy also enjoyed judicial powers. 
The more important bishoprics were the equals 
or superiors of the governorships of Roman 
Provinces in worldly power. 

The incomes of the clergy were placed upon a per- 
manently profitable basis. The Church had become 
the mouthpiece of the Empire to bid men to implicit 
obedience and the State responded by filling the 
mouth with all kinds of delectable nourishment. 

Not only were special privileges granted to 
Churchmen but natural rights were withdrawn 
from those who did not give their allegiance to the 
Christian religion. Moreover, those who did not 
loyally give their adherence to the doctrines estab- 
lished in the councils were treated in this regard the 
same as the pagans. One who accepted the con- 
ciliary resolutions received from the Emperor immu- 
nity and privileges. One who did not was liable 
to confiscation, banishment and death. The 
Church had become wholly paganized. Its real 



1 86 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

object of worship was not Jesus, the Prophet of 
Nazareth or the Father Whom He revealed, but 
Mammon, the god of this world. "It held to the 
one and despised the other." Instead of the leaven 
of the Kingdom leavening the world, the leaven of 
mammon was to leaven the whole ecclesiastical 
lump. Successful mammon worship came to be 
recognized as a form of piety, as the following quo- 
tation from Dr. Allen's ''Christian Institutions" 
brings forth with gentle humor : 

The bishops became rich in lands and estates through 
the gifts that were heaped upon them by grateful sov- 
ereigns or by the piety of individuals, of whose wealth 
they seemed the most appropriate heirs. Just as the 
piety of the time took shape in the donations of every 
kind of property, so the piety of the bishop was shown 
in the faithful administration of property by which it 
continued to increase. Secular lords might prove ex- 
travagant and reckless with no sense of the value of their 
estates; but the model bishop held his property as a 
divine possession, not to be alienated but multiplied as 
talents entrusted to him which it was his duty to increase 
many fold. 1 

It is to be feared that much of this same kind of 
piety survives in our modern parish institutions. 
It has been the prevailing heresy of the Christian 
ages that God wishes to be worshipped by means of 
things instead of by the establishing of the Beloved 
Community which shall extend the principles of 
divine life and love to all the children of God. 

1 Op cit. p. 205. 



Cult Becomes an Exploiting Ecclesiasticism 187 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X 

The process by which the Church became legal- 
ized, i. e., Romanized, will be indicated by the fol- 
lowing extracts from the chapter on Roman and 
Canon Law in Henry Osborn Taylor's "Mediaeval 
Mind," vol. II, p. 265: 

The Church, from the time of its first recognition by 
the Roman Empire, lived under the Roman law; and the 
constitutions safeguarding its authority were large and 
ample before the Empire fell. Constantine, to be sure, 
never dreamed of the famous " Donation of Constantine" 
forged by a later time, yet his enactments fairly launched 
the great mediaeval Catholic Church upon the career 
which was to bring it more domination than was granted 
in this pseudo-charter of its power. A number of Con- 
stantine's enactments were preserved by the Theodosian 
Code, in which the powers and privileges of Church and 
clergy were portentously set forth. 

The Theodosian Code freed the property of the 
Church from most fiscal burdens, and the clergy from 
taxes, from public and military service, and from many 
other obligations which sometimes the Code groups under 
the head of sordida munera. The Church might receive 
all manner of bequests, and it inherited the property of 
such of its clergy as did not leave near relatives surviving 
them. Its property generally was inalienable; and the 
clergy were accorded many special safeguards. Slaves 
might be manumitted in a church. The church edifices 
were declared asylums of refuge from pursuers, a priv- 



1 88 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

ilege which had passed to the churches from the heathen 
fanes and the statues of the emperors. Constitution 
after constitution was hurled against the Church's ene- 
mies. The Theodosian Code has one chapter contain- 
ing sixty-six constitutions directed against heretics, the 
combined result of which was to deprive them, if not of 
life and property, at least of protected legal existence. 

Of enormous import was the sweeping recognition on 
the Empire's part of the validity of episcopal jurisdic- 
tion. No bishop might be summoned before a secular 
court as a defendant, or compelled to give testimony. 
Falsely to accuse one of the clergy rendered the accuser 
infamous. All matters pertaining to religion and church 
discipline might be brought only before the bishop's 
court, which likewise had plenary jurisdiction over con- 
troversies among the clergy. It was also open to the 
laity for the settlement of civil disputes. The command 
not to go to law before the heathen came down from 
Paul (I Cor. vi), and together with the severed and per- 
secuted condition of the early Christian communities, 
may be regarded as the far source of the episcopal juris- 
diction, which thus divinely sanctioned tended to extend 
its arbitrament to all manner of legal controversies. To be 
sure, under the Christian Roman Empire, the authority 
of the Church as well as its privileges rested upon impe- 
rial law. Yet the emperors recognized, rather than 
actually created, the ecclesiastical authority. And when 
the Empire was shattered, there stood the Church erect 
amid the downfall of the imperial government, and capa- 
ble of supporting itself in the new Teutonic kingdoms. 

The Church arose within the Roman Empire, and who 
shall say that its wonderfully efficient and complete or- 



Cult Becomes an Exploiting Ecclesiasticism 189 

ganization at the close of the patristic period was not the 
final creation of the legal and constructive genius of 
Rome, newly inspired by the spirit of Christianity? 

The canon law is a vast sea. Its growth, its age-long 
agglomerate accretion, the systematization of its huge 
contents, have long been subjects for controversialists 
and scholars. Its sources were as multifarious as those 
of the Roman law. First the Scriptures and the early 
quasi-apostolic and pseudo-apostolic writings; then the 
traditions of primitive Christianity and also the writings 
of the Fathers; likewise ecclesiastical customs, long ac- 
cepted and legitimate, and finally the two great written 
sources, the decretals or decisions of the popes and the 
decrees of councils. From patristic times collections 
were made of the last. These collections from a chrono- 
logical gradually acquired a topical and more systemic 
arrangement, which the compilers followed more com- 
pletely after the opening of the tenth century. The de- 
cisions of the popes also had been collected, and then 
were joined to conciliar compilations and arranged after 
the same topical plan. 

In all of them there was unauthentic matter, accepted 
as if its pseudo-authorship or pseudo-source were gen- 
uine. But in the stormy times of the ninth century 
following the death of Charlemagne, the method of argu- 
ment through forged authority was exceptionally crea- 
tive. It produced two masterpieces which won universal 
acceptance. The first was a collection of false Capitu- 
laries ascribed to Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, and 
ostensibly the work of a certain Benedictus Levita, dea- 
con of the Church of Mainz, who worked in the middle 
of the century. Far more famous and important was 



190 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

the book of False Decretals, put together and largely 
written, that is forged, about the same time, probably 
in the diocese of Rheims, and appearing as the work of 
Saint Isidore of Seville. This contained many forged 
letters of the early popes and other forged matter, includ- 
ing the Epistle or "Donation" of Constantine; also gen- 
uine papal letters and concilar decrees. These false col- 
lections were accepted by councils and popes, and formed 
part of subsequent compilations. 



Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 191 



CHAPTER XI 

SOME CHRISTIAN INSURGENT PROPHETS 

Having traced the history of the Catholic Church 
to the point where exploitation had come to be rec- 
ognized as a form of piety it would be necessary 
practically to rehearse the history of the entire 
mediaeval church in order to show how the prin- 
ciple was worked out and extended. In the East 
the patriarchates grew to the dimensions of king- 
doms. In the West the papacy became virtually 
a theocratic empire. Its dominion was not only 
extended over the national churches, all of which 
were made to pay tribute greatly in excess of the 
revenues of their respective kingdoms, but it exer- 
cised an over-lordship over kingly courts, and so 
long as its anathemas and fears were held in super- 
stitious regard it could bend recalcitrant kings and 
emperors to its sovereign will. 

But powerful as the church was both ecclesias- 
tically and politically it could not absolutely stifle 
the voices of a new race of insurgent prophets 
which from time to time arose to denounce its ex- 
ploitations and to preach a return to the simplicity 
of the social Gospel of Christ. We can do little 
more than call the roll of a few more honored names. 

I 

In Arnold of Brescia, born in 1100, we find a real 
prophet with a program for Christianizing the polit- 



192 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

ical and social order. Resisting all temptations 
to indulge in exploitation he lived in Evangelical 
poverty. Walter Mapes, the English traveler, 
records his impression of him in the following words: 
"In religion, a leader of leaders, allowing himself 
neither food nor clothing beyond what the strictest 
necessity compelled, he went about preaching, seek- 
ing nothing for himself but all for God, and became 
loved and admired by all." 1 Mapes, however, 
should have excepted from the number of those 
who loved and admired him the exploiting eccle- 
siastics and secular rulers. His denunciations of 
the wealth and self-indulgence of the clergy richly 
earned their dislike, but it was his political teachings 
that were taken as the ground for his persecution. 
On scriptural grounds he maintained that the pope 
should not exercise political rule. Rome should 
properly come under the government of an Emperor 
who should receive his office not by right of succes- 
sion but through a popular election. Arnold was the 
foe at once of ecclesiastical and political autocracy. 
The citizens of Rome for a time accepted his 
doctrine and made him the head of a de facto repub- 
lic which for ten years succeeded in compelling the 
Pope to relinquish his temporal power. At the end 
of this ten year period the Pope and the Emperor 
made common cause against him. The soldiers of 
Barbarossa succeeded in capturing the prophet and 
handed him over to the " Vicar of God" who caused 
him to be hanged and burned, after which his ashes 

1 De Nugis Curial. Dist. I, 24. 



Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 193 

were desecrated by being cast into the Tiber. Thus 
the prophetic messenger was found worthy to meet 
the prophet's fate. 

II 

Francis of Assisi was a Churchman of a far gen- 
tler type, who, though he was sparing of denuncia- 
tion, was nevertheless keenly aware of evils and 
abuses and in his own way gave his life to remedy- 
ing them. He, therefore, deserves a place among 
the prophets. What others had attempted to do 
by agitation or political revolt, Francis undertook 
to accomplish by means of an organized social move- 
ment within the Church. It was an attempt to 
found a religious order the rule of which should be 
true to the Sermon on the Mount. It was an at- 
tempt to unite a body of earnest men, committed 
to Evangelical poverty, who should adopt as the 
central principle of their conduct Jesus' law of serv- 
ice. He wrote to the Superiors of the Order, " 'I 
did not come to be ministered unto but to minister,' 
says the Lord. Let those who are set above others 
glory in their superiority only as much as if they 
had been deputed to wash the feet of the brothers." l 

The vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, 
were supposedly taken by all the mediaeval relig- 
ious orders, but this did not prevent them from 
attaining great corporate wealth. They became 
one of the great organs of ecclesiastical exploitation. 

1 "Writings of St. Francis of Assisi," edited by Father Pascal 
Robinson, Philadelphia, 1906, p. 9. 



194 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

The popular antagonism to them in a later period 
was based upon their great wealth and their means 
of getting it. 

Francis gave great thought and attention to pre- 
vent any possible kind of exploitation by the mem- 
bers of his community whether as individuals or 
collectively. They were not to beg alms except 
when the opportunity to earn the necessities of life 
was denied them, and then they were forbidden to 
accept money. They sought to go back to the time 
when the preachers of religion earned their own 
living while preaching the Gospel — to the time when 
Jesus was a carpenter, the Apostles were fishermen, 
when St. Paul was a tent-maker. They were not 
even to accept money as wages in return for actual 
labor, but only food and shelter. They were not 
permitted to engage in all kinds of labor but only 
such as were productive. "Let the brothers, in 
whatever places they may be among others to serve 
or to work, not be chamberlains, nor cellarers, nor 
over-seers, in the houses of those whom they serve, 
and let them not accept any employment which 
might cause scandal, or be injurious to their soul, 
but let them be inferior and subject to all who are 
in the same house. And let the brothers, . . . 
labor and exercise themselves in that art they may 
understand. . . . For the prophet says: 'For 
thou shalt eat the labors of thine hands, blessed 
art thou, and it shall be well with thee;' and the 
Apostle: 'If any man will not work neither let him 
eat ;' and let every man abide in the art or employ- 



Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 195 

ment wherein he was called. And for their labor 
they may receive all necessary things, except money. 
. . . And they may have the tools and implements 
necessary for their work. . . ."* These rules 
were intended for the members of the first order, 
the friars proper, but the program of Francis em- 
braced a third order intended to include men and 
women of the laity in their daily lives. This plan 
entitles him to be ranked as a great social reformer. 

The four rules of the ' ' tertiaries " were, (1) that 
members should not carry offensive weapons; (2) 
nor take solemn oaths; (3) they were required to 
contribute monthly dues to a common fund; and 
(4) to make their wills within three months after 
their admission to the order. 2 

These seemingly simple rules contemplated noth- 
ing less than the complete overthrow of the exploit- 
ing feudal system. The second provision practi- 
cally absolved the members of the order from oaths 
of allegiance to the feudal lords by which the latter 
held the right to enforce their vassals into their 
personal quarrels. The third rule contemplated 
the accumulation of a fund which would enable 
the serfs to aid each other in adversity and ulti- 
mately to purchase their liberty. The object of 
the fourth rule was to prevent the feudal abuse 
under which the liege lord claimed the property of 
all the serfs who died intestate. Honorius III and 

1 Rule I, sections 8 and 9, Ed. cited pp. 41-44. 

2 Cf. Leo L. Dubois, "St. Francis of Assisi, Social Reformer," 
p. 52. 

is 



196 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

Gregory IX supported the tertiaries in their rights 
to adhere to this rule when it was contested by the 
feudal lords. It therefore accomplished what was 
intended by Francis. In recognition of his services 
to the common people, Sabatier has called him 
"The Father of Italian Democracy" and Cristofani 
has called him "The Patriarch of the Religion of 
Democracy." 

It thus appears that Francis possessed a marked 
capacity which has not been generally credited to 
him, that of a gifted politician. This he used not 
after the manner of most men with this endowment 
for purposes of self-aggrandizement through exploi- 
tation but he used his talent with the object in view 
of combating exploitation. But in this his gift 
was no match for that of the past-master exploiting 
politicians of Rome. After his death they suc- 
ceeded in subordinating his ideals and methods 
so that even his own order finally became an arm 
of the exploiting papal political machine. 

Ill 

Another Italian of still different mould has claims 
to be ranked in the list of Christian insurgent 
prophets, Dante. The Divine Comedy of this poet 
is full of prophetic wrath against the abuses of his 
time and he literally places exploiting Popes, simo- 
niacs, and ecclesiastical grafters in hell. His program 
for reform contemplated the reduction of those 
powers of the Church which it used for purposes 
of exploitation by the power of an ideal emperor. 



Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 197 

The de Monorchia of Dante contains the picture 
of a universal community with a kind of Messianic 
monarch at its head. His ruler is a ''monarch 
who loves men greatly . . . He desires all men 
to do good." (Chapter 12.) It has been said 
that the de Monorchia of Dante was an epitaph 
rather than a prophecy. He had, however, an 
ideal which had striking Messianic affinities as is 
brought out by the following quotation from Joseph 
Mazzini, "The ideas of which I have here given 
a sketch (the Titanic dream of an Italy, the 
leader of humanity and angel of light among the 
nations) are fermenting, more or less boldly devel- 
oped, among the youth of Italy. Understanding 
Dante better than those who w r rite about him, they 
revere him as the prophet of the nation, and as the 
one who gave to Italy not only the scepter of mod- 
ern poetry but the initiative thought of a new phi- 
losophy." 1 Dinsmore says of him "like the stern 
Hebrew prophet whom he so much resembles this 
Tuscan seer was an ardent patriot. He never di- 
vorced his religion from his politics, but brought 
both under the same august moral order." 2 

Another fellow countryman of Dante, Marsig- 
lio of Padua, the joint author with John of Jandun 
of the Defensor Pads, deserves a place on the pro- 
phetic roll of honor. It is of special interest for us 
to-day that he advocated political democracy and 

1 Essay on Dante. 

2 Charles Allen Dinsmore, "The Teachings of Dante," 1901, 
P- 57- 



198 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

the greatest possible freedom of opinion in theo- 
logical and ecclesiastical matters. He advocated 
the principle that " heretics" are to be left to the 
judgment of Christ; errors in opinion are not sub- 
ject to human judgment. 1 

IV 

Turning now to England we find in the writings 
of William Langland, a peasant priest, a complete 
draft of the prophetical interpretation of Chris- 
tianity and of the doctrines of the Kingdom of God, 
in his "The Vision of William, Concerning Piers 
the Ploughman." The corruption and exploita- 
tion on the part of ecclesiastics, the secular nobility 
and the monarchy are dealt with in a most trench- 
ant manner. Christianity is made to consist in the 
law of love. Deliverance from evils is sought in a 
return to the moral leadership of the lowly peasant 
of Nazareth who is typified by the figure of Piers 
the Ploughman. The quest for truth must be 
made through a life of love to God and fellowman, 
abstention from all injury and an observance of all 
the commandments. They who thus live by divine 
grace will discover truth within their own hearts 
united to love. As a reform method of doing away 
with abuses Piers would set all the idlers and wasters 
at productive toil. This would prove a means of 
the removal of all social evils and protect the poor 
from exploitation by the idle rich. 

1 See Reginald Lane Poole's "Some Illustrations of Mediaeval 
Thought' 7 



Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 199 

Against the Church's claim to have the keys of 
heaven and hell, which doctrine lay at the basis 
of the practice of the sale of indulgences and other 
corrupt abuses, Piers declares that any and all who 
do the Will of God by establishing His justice here 
in human society will hear the words "Well done, 
thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord." What seems to have been the 
original poem concludes with the prayer, "That 
God may give us grace to work such works while 
we are here, that after our death at the day of judg- 
ment, 'Do- Well' shall rehearse that we did as He 
commanded." 1 

The ideas of the poem are further carried out in 
the "Vita de Do-wel, Do-bet and Do-best." In 
this continuation of the poem the character of Piers 
the Ploughman continues to play the chief role. 
The poet carries out the idea that if all men were 
engaged in useful and productive labor, and none 
took more out of the common products than he 
actually required, all would be "in common rich." 2 
The allegorical figure of Piers the Ploughman stands 
for the type of man which is to save society from 
its wrongs and inequalities. Thus, like his Master, 
Piers becomes a saviour of society, Christ becomes 
identified with the humblest of His brethren, and 
Piers, in turn, is merged into Christ. The soli- 
darity of mankind includes Christ and all His fol- 

1 Passus 7, lines 196-200. 

2 Passus 18, line 43, C — text. 



200 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

lowers, and the Cross of Christ becomes the bond 
of this unified humanity, as the poet says; 

We are all Christ's creatures, and of his coffers rich, 
And brethren of one blood, as well beggars as earls. 
For on Calvary of Christ's blood Christendom sprang, 
And there we became brethren by blood. 1 

It is to the humble peasant class of the fourteenth 
century to which the author looks to incarnate the 
love of Christ and thereby reform the abuses of 
society and the Church. The good Samaritan was 
the embodiment of loving service and when the 
poet has a vision of him he is struck by his resem- 
blance to Piers the Ploughman. This love is the 
one essential. The faith and the hope as held in 
the Church are seen in the guise of priest and Levite 
who pass by on the other side. In Piers the Incar- 
nation is extended. Christ is seen as a Knight who 
wore for his armor the flesh of Piers the Ploughman. 
Thus the poet symbolizes the ancient warfare of 
Him Who came to save the world in the Person of 
the Carpenter of Nazareth. The Word which 
became flesh in the days of Christ is to become flesh 
again in the persons of the poet's lowly contem- 
poraries in whom the Spirit of Christ is to continue 
His warfare of the Kingdom. This striking con- 
ception is the climax of the whole allegory. 

But the powers of evil are still at large in the 
world and a purified militant Church must set for- 
ward the warfare of its ascended Lord against them. 

1 Passus II, i. 191 f. B — text. 



Some Christ id)! Insurgent Prophets 201 

The Church is represented by the poet as having 
been built to receive the harvest of the Gospel. 
It thus resembles a great barn or storehouse. Piers 
the Ploughman is represented as going forth into 
the world to cultivate the harvest of truth. He is 
not, like the clergy, one of the guardians of the 
storehouse, who remain within, for he is doing God's 
work in the world. 

Humanity is now attacked by all the evils and 
abuses which have been exposed earlier in the poem 
— injustice, inequality, wrongs, political and social, 
personified as the hosts of anti-Christ. When thus 
attacked, the common people as of right look to the 
Church for refuge. But the Church, alas, because 
of treachery and abuses within, can offer no ade- 
quate protection. The rightful leader of the Church 
is Conscience, but Conscience has been weakened 
by the false dealings of Envy, Hypocrisy and Flat- 
tery, who hold positions of influence within the 
Church. These have, as co-conspirators, a friar, 
who attempts to salve Conscience, by administering 
soothing but deadly drugs of absolution, dispen- 
sations, and indulgences. Aware of his danger 
Conscience calls out for his ally, "Contrition," to 
come to his rescue, but Contrition does not re- 
spond, having also been drugged with a plaster 
called ' ' Privy-payment. ' ' Realizing that within the 
Church he is in the hands of dangerous enemies 
Conscience by a supreme effort succeeds in escaping 
and goes forth in quest of Piers the Ploughman. 
Thus the author's hope, as was the case in proph- 



202 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

etism and in primitive Christianity, is placed in 
the religious layman who alone can be relied upon 
to correct the abuses of a corrupt and exploiting 
ecclesiasticism. 

The relationship between Langland and his learned 
contemporary, John Wycliffe, is not clear. But 
there is ground for the interesting conjecture that 
he may have been one of Wycliffe's "poor priests." 
However that may be, the peasant preacher by rea- 
son of his employment of "direct insight" has given 
a somewhat profounder interpretation of the Mind 
of Christ than the learned Oxford professor who 
was encumbered by his learning, by his use of the 
scholastic logic, and by his predestinarian theology. 
In spite of these drawbacks he made positive con- 
tributions to the prophetic campaign against ec- 
clesiastical exploitation. 

His chief interest centered in the proposal ad- 
vocated by the secular goverment of England to 
place restrictions upon the extortions of the Roman 
Church by means of a program of disendowment. 
In the reign of Edward III, "the Commons com- 
plained that the taxes paid to the Pope amounted 
yearly to five times the sum paid to the crown." 1 
The problem was to find a legal means of correcting 
this recognized abuse. The attempt to justify 
such a procedure on moral grounds was made in 
Wycliffe's tract " Be Dominio Civili." 2 In this Wy- 

1 Cunningham, "The Growth of English Industry and Com- 
merce," p. 273. 

2 Wycliffe Society Publications. 



Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 203 

cliffe undertakes to show that the Church had no 
moral right to its endowments. He held that it 
was unscriptural for the followers of Christ to hold 
endowments. He contended that the evil man had 
no moral right to hold property. It involved the 
heinous sin of mammon worship, the worst form 
of idolatry. He sought to anticipate the danger 
that disendowment might lead to the cry of martyr- 
dom by declaring that any one who died — not for 
the cause of another but for the sake of avaricious- 
ness — was no more than a "stinking martyr." 

In place of the existing feudal lordship Wy cliffe 
proposed the ideal of " Evangelical lordship" based 
upon the law of service as formulated in Luke 22 : 24- 
27. He held that the law of love as formulated by 
Paul in I Corinthians 13 should be made to apply 
to the social order, and that the law of the Gospel 
ought properly to be taken as the basis of daily 
life superseding the civil law. He recognized that 
this would logically lead to communism which he 
recognized as the ideal form of social organization. 
The administration should be in the hands of an 
aristocracy, or government by the best, who would 
conduct it in the interests of all. He declared that 
the Jewish theocracy which followed the downfall 
of the monarchy was the worst conceivable form of 
government which reached its logical outcome in 
the crucifixion of Jesus. 

While holding to the theoretical superiority of 
communism Wycliffe felt that it was rendered im- 
practicable by the preponderance of sinful men in 



204 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

the community. As he wished to attain immediate 
reform he upheld the monarchy and sought to use 
it as an instrument in reforming the Church. In 
this respect he was followed by Martin Luther. 

But Wycliffe's greatest service to the cause of 
Christian democracy lay in his translation of the 
Scriptures and in the organization of the poor priests 
to give the Gospel Message to the common people. 
The prophetic nature of this movement is well 
brought out in the following description which we 
quote from Thorold Rogers : 

By Wycliffe's labors, the Biblemen had been intro- 
duced to the new world of the Old Testament, to the 
history of the human race, to the primeval Garden and 
the young world, where the first parents of all mankind lived 
by simple toil, and were the ancestors of the proud noble 
and knight, as well as of the down-trodden serf and des- 
pised burgher. They read of the brave times when there 
was no king in Israel, when every man did that was right 
in his own eyes, and sat under his own vine and fig-tree, 
none daring to make him afraid. They read how God, 
through His prophet, had warned Israel of the evils 
which would come to them when a king should rule over 
them, and how speedily this was verified in the conduct 
of the young Rehoboam . . . The God of Israel had 
bidden His people to be husbandmen, and not mounted 
knights and men at arms. But, most of all, the preacher 
would dwell on his own prototype, on the man of God, 
the wise prophet who denounced kings and princes and 
high priests, and by God's commission, made them like 
a potter's vessel, in the day of His wrath ; or on those bold 
judges, who were zealous even to slaying. 



Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 205 

For with this Book, so old, and yet so new, the peasant 
preacher . . . could stir up the souls of these clowns 
with the true narrative of another people, and would be 
sure that his way to their hearts and their confidence, 
would be, as it always has been with the leaders of relig- 
ious revival, by entirely sympathizing with their wrongs, 
their sufferings, and their hopes. 1 

Fortunately for WyclifFe, "his martyrdom" did 
not occur till fifty years after his death. It was 
then purely symbolical, consisting in the desecra- 
tion of his grave and the violation of his ashes. 

V 

While the prophetic spirit was enkindled in Eng- 
land in the manner described, a similar stirring 
was manifested in contemporary Bohemia. The 
religious issue w r hich was there confronted has been 
formulated by Palacky, the historian — as follows: 
"Whether Christianity, as it existed at that time 
in the Western Church, was true to the Mind 
of its Divine Founder and Proclaimer, whether it 
had not drifted in certain respects from Him, and 
whether it ought not to be brought back into its 
original track; this question applies, alike, to the 
theory and practice of Christianity; that is, to the 
doctrine as well as the constitution and discipline 
of the Church." 2 In modern phrase the watch- 
word of the movement was " Back to Christ." 

1 J. E. Thorold Rogers, "Six Centuries of Work and Wages," 
p. 254 f. 

2 Palacky, Geschichte von Bohmen, vol. Ill, p. 155. 



206 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

High on the prophetic roll of honor should be 
inscribed the name of Konrad Waldhauser. The 
striking thing about this prophet was the fact of 
his having been Court chaplain to the reigning 
house of Bohemia. He is the only prophet ever 
known to have held such a position and it speaks 
volumes for the moral seriousness of the Court 
that his preaching proved acceptable. The power 
of his preaching may be inferred from its practical 
fruit as described by Palacky. " The proud women 
by degrees laid aside their accustomed jewels and 
costly veils, their clothing set with gold and pearls, 
and clothed themselves simply. Usury ceased, and 
many flagrant usurers volunteered to compen- 
sate their victims! Notorious prostitutes. . . . 
whose activities in leading away the daughters of 
honest burghers, had even penetrated within the 
Churches, repented and set an example of piety 
and soberness." 1 Konrad was himself so amazed 
at these results that he exclaimed, "How is it that 
the population shows me so much love and attach- 
ment while I do not cease to scourge it? The men- 
dicant monks, on the other hand, do the opposite 
in their preaching; they flatter the people, and be- 
hold their Churches are empty!" 2 

Not only did the mendicant monks and secular 
clergy abstain from preaching repentance, but they 
declined to follow the example of the repentant 
laity when Konrad attacked their simony and ex- 

1 Op. cit. vol. Ill, p. 166. 

2 Ibid. 



Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 207 

ploitation. The Dominicans, following the example 
of the Jerusalem priesthood, attempted to have the 
prophet convicted of heresy, the favorite method 
among the clergy who were more zealous for "sound- 
ness in the faith" than for purity of morals. Kon- 
rad had accused the orders of such degeneracy " that, 
if their founders should reappear among them and 
attempt to hold them to their rule, they would not 
only refuse to recognize but would stone them." 1 
To the credit of the Bohemian king (who was also 
the Emperor, Karl IV, of the Holy Roman Empire), 
be it said that largely owing to his intervention the 
charges of heresy failed. 

But though the clergy in general, unlike the men 
of Nineveh, did not heed the call to repentance, 
there was one notable exception, Milic von Krem- 
sier, the dean ("Domherr") of the Prague Cathe- 
dral, who brought forth fruits meet for repentance. 
Through the favor of the Emperor he had been 
holding a plurality of benefices. On his conversion 
he decided to give up all ecclesiastical revenues 
and honors in order truly to follow in the footsteps 
of Christ. For a year he acted as curate to a country 
parish priest in order to study "the cure of souls." 
He seems to have been greatly impressed by the doc- 
trines of the anti-Christ whose domination seemed 
apparent among all classes of people, especially 
among the higher clergy, the monks, and the rulers 
of the state. The quality of his courage may be 
inferred from the fact that in an assembly attended 

1 Palacky, Loc. cit. 



208 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

by Karl IV he declared in his sermon that the Em- 
peror was no less than the great anti-Christ him- 
self. The magnanimity of this Emperor was again 
exhibited by twice interposing on behalf of the 
prophet when he had to meet charges preferred 
against him by the clergy to the Pope. The second 
charge of heresy comprised twelve counts which 
are worth repeating as throwing light upon the 
prevalent ideas of heresy among the clergy. They 
comprised his doctrine of anti-Christ, his denuncia- 
tion of usury, his recommendation of frequent 
reception of the communion by the laity; his treat- 
ment of the converted prostitutes, which was de- 
scribed as, at the same time, too rigid and too len- 
ient ; his denunciations of the clergy ; his attitude on 
excommunication, which they declared he regarded 
lightly; his alleged condemnation of the study of 
the liberal arts; his forbidding of ornaments to the 
wearing apparel of women ; his alleged haughtiness 
and shielding of himself behind the worldly power, 
which he was accused of arousing against the spirit- 
ual; and, finally, upon his doctrine of "Evangelical 
poverty, " which, they declared, would allow no pri- 
vate possessions to the clergy. 

The Bohemian prophetic movement culminated 
in the persons of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, 
avowed disciples of John Wycliffe, who were to suffer 
the martyr's death for their adherence to the Eng- 
lish reformer's doctrine. The immediate cause of 
their trial was Huss's unsparing denunciation of a 
bull of Pope John XXIII, in which he had granted 



Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 209 

plenary indulgences to all who would take part 
in a "Crusade" against Ladislaw, king of Naples. 
This bull Huss condemned as utterly anti-Christian, 
in that it was a summons to Christian men to shed 
the blood of their fellow Christians, for no other 
fault than obedience to their king. 

The results of his boldness are familiar history — 
the trial, excommunication, and execution of Huss 
at the Council of Constance. The absolute wicked- 
ness of the ecclesiastical injustice was w r ell illustrated 
in the violation of Huss's safe conduct, issued for 
the purpose of luring him to his fate, on the ground 
that there is no obligation on the part of the Church 
to keep faith with a heretic. Among the monstrous 
charges of which he was convicted was that he 
claimed to be a fourth person of the Godhead — 
co-equal with the Three Persons of the Trinity. 

The martyrdom of Huss, and the means employed 
to effect it, inflamed the national sentiment of the 
Bohemians against the Papal tyranny. A revolu- 
tionary movement was started under the leader- 
ship of Zizka. The diabolical persecution which 
ensued revived the Apocalyptic spirit of despair so 
that many looked for the Apocalyptic miraculous 
intervention of God to put an end to the reign of 
anti-Christ. 

The principles for which the revolutionists con- 
tended w r ere set forth in a statement known as the 
"Four Articles" of which we quote the first and 
third: "(i) That the Word of God shall be preached 
and proclaimed by Christian priests in the kingdom 



210 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

of Bohemia, freely and without hindrance; (iii), 
Since many priests and monks possess in a worldly 
manner many earthly goods against the command 
of Christ, to the destruction of their spiritual office 
and to the disadvantage of the worldly orders, 
therefore, that from such priests this lordship (con- 
trary to the rules of their Order) should be taken 
away and ended, and that they should be led in 
the way of Christ to live as models according to 
the Holy Scriptures." 1 It required no less than 
five "Crusades," the participants in which received 
full Papal indulgences, to suppress this reforma- 
tory movement and to force the tyranny of the 
Roman Catholic ascendency upon an unwilling 
people, many of whose descendants to-day keep 
alive a spirit of bitter resentment. 

VI 

Among the most conspicuous prophetic figures 
of late mediaeval history is that of Savonarola, the 
prophet monk of the Florentines. This friar of 
St. Mark's was a diligent student of the ancient 
Hebrew prophets and from their writings he drew 
his favorite texts. He modeled his preaching upon 
theirs, denouncing the hollowness of the gorgeous 
ceremonial practices and the evil lives and hypoc- 
risy alike of the nobility and of the exploiting priest- 
hood. He accepted and applied to himselfthe title 
of "prophet" with a full appreciation of the mean- 
ing of the phrase, and though he shrank from the 

1 Palacky, vol. Ill, part II, p. 135 f. 



Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 211 

prophet's martyrdom he finally met it uncomplain- 
ingly. After the example of Isaiah he undertook 
a complete social and political reform of Florence. 
Full justice has been done him in the classical work 
of his biographer, Vilari. Because of the success 
which attended his Florentine social reform, Vilari 
declared of him that he "deserves to be ranked 
among the greatest founders of republican states." l 
Perhaps his whole teaching can be summarized by 
a brief extract from his fourteenth sermon on "Lib- 
erty": "The only true liberty consists in the desire 
for righteousness . . . What liberty is there in 
being dominated by our own passions? . . . Citi- 
zens, would ye be free? First of all, love God, love 
your neighbor, love one another, love the general 
welfare: and if ye have this love and union among 
you, true liberty will be yours." 2 

Had Savanorola but included the precept "love 
your enemies" and given it a universal application, 
he would have here made a complete summary of the 
prophetic Christian doctrine. 

VII 

It is with some hesitation that we connect the 
"Humanism" of the "Oxford reformers" of 1496 
with the insurgent prophetic movement. The trio 
consisting of Erasmus, More and Colet whose fel- 
low work has been so charmingly set forth in See- 

1<J Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola," English trans- 
lation, vol. I, p. 301. 

1 Quoted by Vilari, op. cit. vol. I, p. 338. 

16 



212 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

bohm's "Oxford Reformers," may be character- 
ized as having possessed the prophetic theology 
without the prophetic spirit of self-sacrifice in mili- 
tant devotion to the prophetic cause. They re- 
main mere idealistic theorists, knowing the better 
way but failing to do it. The paradox is illustrated 
in the title of Erasmus' "Enchiridion" or "The 
Handy-Book of the Christian Soldier." Erasmus 
described his object in writing this book as follows: 
"I wrote to display neither genius nor eloquence, 
but simply for this, to counteract the vulgar errors 
of those who think that religion consists in cere- 
monies, in more than Jewish observances, while 
they neglect what really pertains to piety. I have 
tried to teach, as it were, the art of piety in the same 
way as others have laid down the rules of (military) 
discipline." But the defect of this manual is that 
which we should expect of a writer on military tac- 
tics who had never participated in a military cam- 
paign, or himself submitted to the discipline of 
military training. 

Thomas More in his "Utopia" produced a com- 
plete satire on the evils, political and ecclesiastical, 
of his time. He also propounded a scheme of the 
true organization of the social order that should be 
founded upon the teachings of Jesus. But its very 
title "Utopia" showed that he regarded it as an 
impracticable dream. He showed men what was 
the true social program of Jesus, which Jesus died 
in order to bring to pass, and having drawn the 
picture he practically abandoned it as useless. He 



Some Christian Insurgent Prophets 213 

remained one who said "and did not." He died 
a martyr's death, not for the cause of the kingdom 
of God but as a reactionary upholding the cause of 
the Roman Church against a cause certainly worthy 
of reprobation — that of the sensual exploiting king 
Henry VIII. 

Colet gave promise of great prophetic boldness, 
when he denounced in St. Paul's Cathedral the 
proposed invasion by Henry VIII of the soil of 
France for selfish dynastic reasons, but he allowed 
the king to trick him by the shallow pretense that 
, the proposed scheme of conquest was in reality but 
a far-seeing measure of defense against future in- 
vasions by France. This favorite device of autoc- 
racies of justifying campaigns of conquest on the 
pretext that they are defensive measures has shown 
remarkable vitality in its survival to the present 
day, and modern Colets seem not to be more suc- 
cessful in dealing with the situation. 

We now turn from this group of theorists who 
seemed to have had a clear insight into the Chris- 
tianity of Christ but failed to apply it, to the men 
who identified Christianity with the Pauline inter- 
pretation but took the risks of putting this Chris- 
tianity of a secondary type to the actual task of 
reforming the Church. 



214 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SO-CALLED REFORMATION 

The Reformation of Luther and Calvin reformed 
the Church on the basis of those teachers' inter- 
pretation of Paulinism which they identified with 
Christianity. Therein consisted its weakness. With 
Paul the scope of religion was confined to the cult, 
a limited, though beloved community. Therefore 
the so-called Reformation restricted itself to the 
Reformation of the Church as its proper field. The 
Christianity of Christ contemplated, not the erec- 
tion of a cult but the renovation of human society 
in its furthest reaches by incarnating the principles 
of the prophetic theology and ethic in the body of 
a community co-extensive with all the interests of 
mankind. The Reformation of Luther and Calvin 
met with a wide degree of success. But there was 
also a contemporary attempt at a reformation of 
the whole social order according to the program of 
Jesus in the movement known as "Anabaptism." 
This attempt failed and its failure was brought 
about by the joint efforts of the older ecclesiasticism 
and the newer Pauline ecclesiasticism of the Protes- 
tant Reformers. 

I 

Though, as already said, the Reformation did not 
succeed in reviving real Christianity, yet it accom- 
plished much good in a negative way by making 



The So- Called Reformation 215 

inroads upon the monopoly of ecclesiastical author- 
ity and the doctrine which made "Divine" the 
vested rights of Popes, bishops and the lower clergy. 
But it accomplished harm in that while combating 
one type of authority it established another of mixed 
value. The doctrine of the equal Divine inspira- 
tion of all parts of the Bible placed the sanction of 
God equally upon the exploiting system of the 
priestly code and the prophetic message which cut 
at the root of the priestly scheme of external con- 
trol of religion. This led to a synthesis of irrecon- 
cilable opposites which has been responsible for the 
failure of Protestantism to attain a true under- 
standing of the real nature of Christianity, and has 
been responsible for the multiplication of Protestant 
sects. In place of the tyranny of the infallible 
Church, it placed the tyranny of priestly theology 
and ethics which was given an equal place with the 
spiritual utterances of the representatives of the 
prophetic revelation of the real Nature of God. 
While it was doing this it erected in the place of 
"the Divine right of the hierarchy" the "Divine 
right of Princes" — a costly error which has become 
one of the chief psychological sources of the present 
world war initiated to extend the "Divine right" 
of its fanatical upholder in the modern Kaiser to 
cover a greater successor to the "Holy Roman 
Empire." 

The Reformation of Luther did much to put an 
end to exploitation by the Church in Germany, but 
Protestantism became subservient to the secular 



216 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

exploiting classes and became partaker with them 
in the blood of the prophets of real religion. 

The exploitations by the Roman Church which 
had for centuries been extending its machinery of 
exactions, realizing a revenue from baptisms, burials, 
marriages, dispensations, requiem masses, as well as 
from other sources, at length exploited the sale of 
indulgences to a shameless and scandalous extent. 
It was this, rather than any theological issue, which 
at length awakened the reformatory zeal of Luther 
to the publication of his famous " Ninety-Five 
Theses" against the practice. Here are a few of the 
popular doctrines preached by the peddlers of indul- 
gences which Luther denounced and for which he 
was condemned by the Papal Court. "They preach 
man, who say that the soul flies out of purgatory as 
soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles." x 
"Why does not the Pope empty purgatory for the 
sake of most holy charity and of the supreme 
necessity of souls — this being the most just of all 
reasons — if he redeem an infinite number of souls 
for the sake of that most fatal thing, money, to be 
spent on building of basilica — this being a very 
slight reason?" 2 The irony of the following was 
well calculated to stir up the wrath of those who 
were profiting by this traffic: "Again, what is this 
new kindness of God and the Pope, in that, for 
money's sake, they permit an impious man and an 
enemy to God, to redeem a pious soul which loves 

1 Thesis 27. 

2 Thesis 82. 



The So- Called Reformation 217 

God, and yet do not redeem that same pious and 
beloved soul, out of free charity, on account of its 
own need?" l " Christians should be taught that 
he who gives to a poor man, or lends to a needy man, 
does better than if he bought pardons. Because, 
by works of charity, charity increases, and the man 
becomes better; while, by means of pardons, he 
does not become better, but only freer from pun- 
ishment." 2 

The chief power of the Roman Church to exploit 
then rested, as it still rests to-day, upon the super- 
stitious fears of men, carefully nourished by the 
Church's teachers, from the days of childhood, that 
rescue from eternal hell depends upon docile obedi- 
ence to the dictations of the Church through its 
clergy. 

In the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith 
alone, Luther sought to set men free from the fear 
of the ecclesiastical control of their destinies by 
placing the conditions of their own salvation en- 
tirely within the reach of their own acts of faith. 
The acceptance of this doctrine at once liberated 
men both from the spiritual and the temporal 
exploiting tyranny of the Church of Rome. 

"All who believe in Christ," says Luther, "are 
kings and priests in Christ." 3 As kings the Chris- 
tians are "the freest of all men," as priests they 

1 Thesis 84. 

2 Theses 43 and 44. 

3 Tract on Christian Liberty, in "First Principles of the Ref- 
ormation," Ed. Horace Wall, p. 114. 



218 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

have a dignity far higher, "because that by that 
priesthood Christians are worthy to appear before 
God, to pray for others, and to teach one another 
mutually the things which are of God/' l 

As all believers are kings and priests, those 
appointed to office and administration in the 
Church, are not called to rule, but in a special 
sense are called to serve. The error of the Roman 
Church consists in having reversed this Divine 
order, for, in the words of Luther, it designates as 
"Pope, bishop and lords," those whom the Scrip- 
ture plainly calls "ministers, servants, and stew- 
ards." "This bad system has now issued in such 
a pompous display of power, and such a terrible 
tyranny, that no earthly government can be com- 
pared with it, as if the laity were something else 
than Christians. Through this perversion of things, 
it has happened that the knowledge of Christian 
grace, of faith, of liberty, and altogether of Christ, 
has utterly perished, and has been succeeded by an 
intolerable bondage to human works and laws; and, 
according to the Lamentations of Jeremiah, we 
have become the slaves of the vilest men on earth, 
who abuse our misery, to all the disgraceful and 
ignominious purposes of their own free will." 2 

The reformatory consequences of this doctrine 
may be seen to follow easily. Since all believers 
are the Church, those who have arrogated to them- 
selves the office of rulers, when they were intended 

1 Op. cit. p. 115. 

2 Op. cit. p. 117. 



The So-Called Reformatio)! 219 

to be but the servants of all, must be made to see 
and feel their error. As the leaders of the Church 
refuse to repent and reform themselves, then the 
responsibility falls upon the laity of compelling 
them to do so, no matter what the threats or pre- 
tensions of the resisting officials. This line of 
thought is developed to its logical conclusion in 
his "Address to the German Nobility." He sum- 
marized the situation in the following words: 

The Romanists have, with great adroitness, drawn 
three walls around themselves, with which they have 
hitherto protected themselves, so that no one could 
reform them, whereby all Christendom has fallen terribly. 

Firstly, if pressed by the temporal power, they have 
affirmed and maintained that the temporal power has no 
jurisdiction over them. But on the contrary that the 
spiritual power is above the temporal. Secondly, if it 
were proposed to admonish them with the Scriptures, 
they objected that no one may interpret the Scriptures 
but the Pope. Thirdly, if they were threatened with 
a Council, they pretended that no one may call a Council 
but the Pope. 1 

Luther follows Wycliffe in the belief that the 
reformation of the Church could be accomplished 
only through the instrumentality of the secular 
power. Accordingly, it becomes necessary for him 
to find moral grounds for this program. He finds 
his basis in the doctrine of the universal priesthood 
of all believers and of the Divine nature of the 

1 "Luther's Primary Works," edited by Henry Wace, D.D., 
and C. A. Buchheim, Ph.D., Phil., 1885, p. 105. 



220 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

state. "Forasmuch as the temporal power has been 
ordained by God for the punishment of the bad 
and the protection of the good, therefore we must 
let it do its duty throughout the whole Christian 
body without respect of persons ; whether it strikes 
Popes, bishops, priests, monks or nuns." l 

Luther succeeded in enlisting a large portion of 
the German nobility in his reformatory movement. 
But it is doubtful if the sense of duty as set forth 
by Luther was a stronger element than the desire 
of the secular rulers and of their subjects to be rid 
of the ecclesiastical vampire that was sucking the 
blood from the social and economic life of the 
German states. It is interesting to note that 
Luther shared the Apocalyptic expectation that 
the world was soon to pass away and be super- 
seded by the coming of the Kingdom of Christ 
from above. This view has always paralyzed the 
efforts on the part of men to usher in the Kingdom 
of God as futile. 

Luther regarded salvation from the purely per- 
sonal point of view, and overlooked entirely the 
social meaning of the doctrine of the Kingdom of 
God. This is most clearly brought out in Luther's 
catechism in the following questions and answers: 

Q. Thy kingdom come, what is that? 

A. God's kingdom assuredly comes without our 
prayers, but we pray in this prayer that it may come 
to us. 

Q. How does this happen? 

1 Op. cit. p. 23. 



The So -Called Reformation 221 

A. When the heavenly Father gives us His Holy 
Ghost so that through His grace we believe His Holy 
Word, and live a godly life here in time and hereafter 
in eternity. 

Thus Luther transforms the Lord's Prayer for 
the coming of the Messianic Kingdom to the world 

• into a prayer for the salvation of the individual 
soul, against wdiich quest Jesus warned those 
who would be His followers. He thus throws away 

' the pivotal thought of Jesus' doctrine of the King- 
dom. For the same reason and in like manner He 
abandons the one vital thing in the Absolute ethic 
of Jesus, the enacting clause. In place of this he 
sanctions the principle of inconsistency or com- 
promise between Christian faith and practice in 
the most explicit terms. "A Christian contains 
two persons, namely, a believing and spiritual, and 
a civil or worldly. The believing endures all things, 
does not eat or drink, does not beget children, nor 
concern himself with worldly matters. But the 
civil person is subject to worldly laws, and ordi- 
nances, owes obedience and must defend and pro- 
tect its own as the laws command." l 

This fatal principle is not far removed from the 
immoral principle underlying the cultus that there 
was no connection between the worship of God and 
the type of life of the worshipper. It sets up the 
fatal double standard. It is a flat denial of the 

Quoted by F. G. Ward, "Darstellung und Wurdigung der 
Ansichten Luthers von Staat und seinen Wirtschaftlichen 
Aufgaben," p. 16. 



222 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

warning of Jesus " Ye cannot serve God and Mam- 
mon" which it paraphrases and contradicts at the 
same time by the sentiment, U A man must serve 
both God and Mammon. The spiritual person 
within him is only concerned with God. The civil 
person within him must serve mammon." Thus 
Lutheranism sanctions a principle fatal to the under- 
standing of the primary demand of Jesus that the 
whole man — body, spirit, mind and will — should be 
given to the loving service of God and brother man. 
This fact explains why Lutheranism accomplished 
its work when it reformed the abuses of the Church 
and shows further why the whole weight of the 
influence of Luther is cast in the way of the pro- 
posal to reform the abuses of the secular order, and, 
further, why it must be rejected by all who would 
advance to the complete reformation of the world's 
life under the leadership of Jesus Christ. 

II 

It is not necessary to our theme to point out 
the differences between Lutheranism and Calvin- 
ism in detail. It is enough to say that Calvin 
considered that the daily life of the Christian man 
should be made to conform to the law of God. His 
system was far more favorable to democracy and 
where Calvinism has prevailed there has been a 
greater emphasis laid upon civil liberty than where 
Lutheranism has had sway. But the stumbling 
block of Calvinism is found in its restriction of 
salvation to a comparatively small body of the 



The So-Called Reformation 223 

elect, in its doctrine of predestination and in its 
priestly theology which conceived of God as a 
capricious and arbitrary Omnipotent despot. His 
theology, therefore, contradicts the universalism of 
the prophets and of Jesus and so limits the univer- 
sal application of the law of love. For it is no 
longer possible to ask frail man to love his enemies 
when God hates His Own enemies with the bitter- 
ness of hell. Like Lutheranism Calvinism also 
failed to revive the Christianity of Christ. 

Ill 

We now turn to see whether the English Ref- 
ormation was more successful in transcending the 
limitations of the cult idea and in recovering the 
universalism of the true Christian theology and 
ethic. 

In its controversy with Protestantism, Anglican- 
ism, through its accredited mouthpieces the bishops, 
claims that because of its retention of the episcopal 
office the Church of England and its allied com- 
munions have remained in unity with the Apostolic 
Church. It rejects many of the Roman Catholic 
doctrines and practices but protests chiefly against 
the papacy as an invasion of the final Apostolic 
rights and equality of the College of Bishops. The 
Anglican Church and its branches recognize the 
"validity" of the Roman Catholic ministry and 
the sacraments, but deny that quality to the 
ministry and the sacraments of non-episcopal 
bodies. Theoretically, it is only through the Holy 



224 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

Spirit transmitted through the hands of the bishop 
that the sanction and presence of the Holy Spirit 
may be secured. Therefore, those who forsake the 
society of the bishops, separate themselves from 
the fellowship of the Apostles and so place them- 
selves outside the bounds of the One, Holy, Catholic 
and Apostolic Church. Comparing this with our 
foregoing study it is at once apparent that we have 
the cult idea in a very exclusive form. It pays no 
regard to the prophetic idea that the true relation- 
ship of the soul to God is a personal and moral 
relationship not dependent upon the mediation of 
ecclesiastical go-betweens. In denying the doctrine 
of the Apostolical Succession through the bishops 
Protestantism comes nearer to the prophetic prin- 
ciple of the freedom of the individual to unmediated 
personal access to God. In the light of our investi- 
gations if our contention has been maintained suc- 
cessfully, that the Twelve Apostles immediately 
after the death of Jesus committed themselves to a 
doctrine of the Kingdom radically opposed to that 
of their Master, the Apostolical Succession, though 
an established fact, would yet remain unrelated to 
the program of Jesus and without value, because 
of the break in continuity between the religion of 
Jesus and that of His earliest followers. 

But the rejection of the Historic Episcopate by 
many English-speaking Christians at the time of 
the Reformation was not so much due to the 
theoretical consideration as to the Protestant prin- 
ciple formulated in the words of the late Father 



The So-Called Reformation 225 

Tyrrell: ''There can be no Apostolical Succession 
apart from Christlikeness of character." 

A study of some of the Puritan attacks upon the 
Anglican Episcopate shows that they did not base 
their rejection of the bishops upon the theoretical 
view that the episcopate was not founded on 
Scripture, but on the ground that the fruits of the 
lives of the then bishops were incompatible with 
their claim that the authority which they repre- 
sented had its source in a commission of Jesus. 1 

The English Reformation as it was finally accom- 
plished in Anglicanism was "A Reformation from 
Above" — originating with the monarch. Parallel 
with this there was undoubtedly a strong demo- 
cratic reformatory movement following the lines 
of Continental Protestantism. Its adherents for 
the most part ultimately separated from the estab- 
lished Church. 

1 For the material that follows I am indebted to the graduating 
thesis as yet in MS. form, of the Rev. T. M. Griffith, a graduate 
of the Rochester Theological Seminary, entitled "The Eliza- 
bethan Episcopate, an Historical Survey, and a Study of Martin 
Marprelate's Charges against the Bishops." Among others he 
quotes from the following sources, John Petheram, "An Epistle 
to the Terrible Priests of a Convocation House" (1843), (a 
reprint), and "An Epitome of the first book of Dr. John Bridge's" 
"Defense of the Church of England in Ecclesiastical Matters" 
(1843), (a reprint), "Hay Any Work for Cooper" (1845), (a 
reprint), "An Almond for a Parrot" (1846), (a reprint), "A 
Pap with a Hatchet" (1844), (a reprint). Edward Arber, 
"Early English Reprints," reprints I and II, English Scholars' 
Library, 1878. William Pierce, "The Martin Marprelate Tracts" 
(1911). 



226 {Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

Whatever may be thought of the claim that the 
Apostolical Succession passed from the Roman 
Catholic consecrators to their Anglican successors, 
the Episcopal Succession of exploitation seems not 
at this time to have been broken. 

The Anglican bishops assumed a position of hos- 
tility toward those of the Roman obedience. Each 
denied the other's claim to jurisdiction. But both 
kinds looked alike to the Protestant. The Anglican 
bishops, in the words of the "Martinist" were 
"petty anti-Christs, petty popes, proud prelates, 
intolerable with standards of the Reformation, 
enemies of the Gospel and most covetous wretched 
priests." 1 

Shakespeare with the insight of genius, makes 
Cardinal Woolsey, on his downfall, lament that 
he had not served his God with half the zeal that 
he had served his king. He had been setting a 
precedent which seems to have been followed by 
the Elizabethan bishops who appear to have been 
not only the appointees but also the tools of the 
crown. To this Froude bears witness that Eliza- 
beth in her choice of bishops "preferred persons 
whom she could sound from their lowest note to 
the top of their compass, and she accepted moral 
defects in consideration of spiritual complacency." 2 
If they had grave faults her power over them was 
the greater for she could threaten to depose them. 
Among them were many "Calvinists or Lutherans 

1 "Epistle to the Terrible Priests," p. 6. 

2 Froude's "History of England," vol. 12, p. 22. 



The So- Called Reformation 227 

with no special reverence for the office they had 
undertaken; and she treated them in turn with 
studied contempt. She called them 'Doctors' as 
the highest title to which she considered them to 
have any real right; and if they showed themselves 
officious in punishing Catholics she brought them 
up with a sharp reprimand; and if their Protestant- 
ism was conspicuously earnest they were deposed 
and imprisoned." x Archbishop Parker, the Pri- 
mate of the whole Church, seems to have been a 
model of exploitation. Of him Froude says, "He 
had been corrupt in the distribution of his own 
patronage, and he sold his interest to others. No 
Catholic prelate in the old easy times had more 
flagrantly abused the dispensation system. Every 
year he made profits by admitting children to the 
cure of souls for money. He used a graduating 
scale in which the price of inducting an infant into 
a benefice varied with age, children under fourteen 
not being inadmissible if the adequate fees were 
forthcoming." 2 

Practically all the charges made against the 
bishops and their clergy by William Langland in 
the fourteenth century were now made by the 
Puritans in the sixteenth. The Protestants were 
oppressed and suffered imprisonment, as true sons 
of the prophets. The ecclesiastics, abusing their 
civil powers, were the successors of those who had 
persecuted the prophets. 

1 Froude, op. cit. vol. 12, p. 568. 

2 Froude, op. cit. vol. 11, p. 100. 

17 



22 8 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

In short, the English Reformation appears not so 
much as a religious Reformation as an internal con- 
flict for the control of the ecclesiastical political 
machine. The English episcopate was a veritable 
exploiting ecclesiastical autocracy and later Charles 
I recognized that his own Autocracy and that of 
the bishops stood or fell together. 

To-day high Anglicans declare that Protestant- 
ism, because of the lack of the episcopal order, is 
"of men," whereas they assert Catholicism to be 
"of God" because of the unbroken succession of 
bishops which it maintains. Judging them "by 
their fruits" the Puritans believed that the bishops 
held their office not from God but from men. 
Whatever the final verdict of history we may 
plainly see that the bishops exercised such secular 
lordship as the Gentiles used and even yet in Eng- 
land their palaces and endowments and their title 
of "my Lord" are felt by the common people out- 
side the Anglican Church to represent more truly 
their actual status than the claim which is put 
forward in their behalf to be servants of God and 
of the common people. 

IV 

Though Lutheranism and Calvinism put Paulin- 
ism in place of the Christianity of Jesus, and though 
Anglicanism maintained the idea of the exclusive 
cult and gloried in it, yet the true Spirit of Jesus 
was leading some of the more radical reformers, and 
His movement might have come to its own among 



N 



The So- Called Reformation 229 

certain of the so-called Anabaptists, had His Cause 
not been crucified afresh in the violent suppression 
of these true Christians. 

The Anabaptists started from the fundamental 
precept of the prophetic theology, that the Spirit 
of God comes to every man to guide him into the 
truth and to sustain him in righteous conduct. In 
place of the authority of the Church, and in place 
of the authority of the letter of the Scripture, they 
rejected all external authority except the direct 
teachings of Jesus Himself as found in the Gospels 
and as interpreted and applied in the individual 
case by the Holy Spirit. 1 

The aptly named Zwickau prophets, speaking out 
of their own religious experience, told of an inner 
life, of a knowledge of God and friendship with 
Him. For them the starting point was the Gospel 
which Jesus proclaimed from the outset of His 
ministry — faith and repentance toward God. Their 
original leaders seemed to have been Max Stubner, 
Nicolaus Storch and Thomas Munzer. The two 
latter were Bohemians and so of the country which 
had produced its share of prophets in the fourteenth 
century. Munzer was in priest's orders, "They 
agreed with the rest of the reformers that the 
standard of truth was the Bible, and that all things 

1 An admirable history of this movement is found in Richard 
Heath's "Anabaptism, from its rise in Zwickau to its fall in 
Miinster," 1521 to 1536, London, Alexander & Shepheard, 
Furnival Street, Holborn, 1895, to which I acknowledge indebt- 
edness. 



230 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

must be reformed by the Word of God ; but no one, 
they contended, could rightly understand the Scrip- 
tures unless he was taught by the Holy Spirit. To 
every one a measure of that Spirit was given, but 
only to those who faithfully listened to its Voice 
in their hearts would light arise as to the true 
meaning of the Scriptures. And only those would 
effect a reformation who were obedient to the com- 
mands of Christ^ l 

Here at last reformers begin to appear who go 
back of Paulinism, which concerns itself only with 
the internal life of the cult, to the teachings of Jesus 
Himself which concern the organization of the life 
of mankind. 

Munzer began by taking the Sermon on the 
Mount as a program. He taught that on this as a 
basis the real religion of Christ demanded a com- 
plete reorganization of society and of state as well 
as of the Church, into a democracy wholly ani- 
mated by love and the law of service. The true 
significance of the real message of Anabaptism has 
been obscured by the emphasis laid upon the doc- 
trine of adult baptism. But a little reflection will 
enable us to understand why they regarded infant 
baptism as a corruption. They must have refused 
to believe the Romish doctrine that unbaptized 
infants go to hell. They could find no warrant for 
it in Scripture. Moreover, as baptism was the out- 
ward symbol of repentance they could not see how 
infants could repent before they had knowledge 
1 Heath, op. cit. p. 2. 



The So-Called Reformation 231 

and experience of sin. Apparently the Church was 
full of men and women baptized in infancy who 
were living lives contrary to the teachings of Jesus 
without any reproach of conscience or serious effort 
after real amendment. The truth was apparent 
that baptism had ceased to be what it had been 
in the New Testament, a symbol of death unto a 
life of sin and a rising again into a life of righteous- 
ness, and admission into a movement of men ready 
to give their lives in the warfare of Christ's King- 
dom. Instead, baptism had become a sacramental 
initiatory rite into a cult, membership in which 
was supposed to guarantee a happy immortality in 
the world beyond, leaving its members free in this 
present life to exploit their fellows and live the life 
like that of the non-Christian world. The Ana- 
baptists sought to give renewed significance to 
baptism by making it the sign of self-consecration 
to the Cause of the Kingdom of God on earth. 

Luther combated their teachings and it is most 
interesting to note that in doing so he was forced to 
fall back upon something he had formerly rejected, 
the authority of the Church and the consensus of 
all Christians. Before he had met the prophets he 
wrote to Melanchthon in June 17, 1552, in substance 
as follows: 

So far he had heard nothing of these preachers but 
what Satan might say and do. Let them prove their 
mission either by authority from the Church, or by 
miracles. How do they know that children do not 
believe? Faith is not always active, as for example, 



232 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

when we are asleep. Besides, may not the faith of others 
be efficacious on their behalf? The universal agreement 
of the whole Church about infant baptism is a miracle; 
even the heretics acknowledge it." etc., etc. 1 

As the Zwickau prophets could get no hearing 
from the reformers and as the ruling classes were 
deaf to their arguments taken from Scripture (for 
even the Lutheran nobles did not accept the author- 
ity of Scripture teaching where it conflicted with 
their own class interests), it was perhaps inevitable 
that as the movement gained impetus it should 
become actively revolutionary. The peasant ad- 
herents of these leaders relied for a time upon the 
good faith of the Protestant reformers. The 
"Twelve Articles" which they drew up setting 
forth their social rights as drawn from the Scripture 
ended with this final Article: 

If any of these Articles are contrary to the Scriptures 
we will renounce them, or, if any in accordance with the 
Scriptures have been omitted we hold ourselves bound to 
accept and maintain them. The peace of Jesus Christ 
be with every one. Amen. 

But Luther ignored the challenge of their appeal 
to Scriptural authority, knowing in advance, per- 
haps, that they had the best of the argument. He 
kept silent till at length the peasants, animated by 
a spirit of zealotism sought by force of arms to win 
their liberty. Then a very little demon of the 
pagan Furor Teutonicus took possession of him and 

1 Heath, op. cit. p. 5. 



The So- Called Reformation 233 

he wrote with savage "ruthlessness," "In the case 
of an insurgent every man is both judge and execu- 
tioner. Therefore, whoever can should knock down, 
strangle, and stab all such, privately or publicly, 
and think nothing so venomous, pernicious and 
devilish as an insurgent. ... It may happen 
that he who is on the side of the authorities may be 
killed. But if he fought with the conscientiousness 
spoken of, he is a true martyr before God. . . . 
On the other hand, that which perishes on the 
peasant side is an everlasting hell brand. Such 
wonderful times are these, that a Prince can merit 
Heaven better with bloodshed than another with 
prayer." l 

Here the fanatical Luther exhibiting the Apoca- 
lyptic frenzy of hatred against those whom he 
regarded as enemies speaks with the authority of a 
Pope organizing so-called "Crusades" against re- 
bellious Catholics and heretics, and promises the 
equivalent of plenary indulgences to those whose 
piety is shown in slaying. Alas, that the Lutheran 
spirit of ruthlessness did not die with him! Prot- 
estant and Catholic armies united to stamp out 
this "evil" in which between one hundred and one 
hundred and fifty thousand peasants lost their lives 
righting for liberty which by the standards of 
Luther's infallible Scriptures they were entitled to 
enjoy. 

We have classified the Zwickau prophets and 
their followers with the Anabaptists, but perhaps 

1 Quoted by Heath, op. cit. p. 20, 



234 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

this title should properly be reserved for those 
pacifists whose movement arose in Zurich under 
the leadership of Wilhelm Reabali, Konrad Grebel 
and Simon Stump, who separated themselves from 
the reformer Zwingli. They refused to baptize 
infants and formed a new religious community 
founded upon the effort to practice the ethics of 
Jesus. They baptized each other (not by immer- 
sion, however), and thus began a short-lived sepa- 
rate Church. They had in the main the same 
beliefs as those of the Zwickau prophets about the 
inner life, adding as an essential part of their pro- 
gram the practice of non-resistance based upon the 
Commission of Jesus to the Twelve. They held 
(quite truly it would appear) that true Christians 
are in the world like sheep among wolves. They 
pledged themselves on no account to defend them- 
selves from enemies or avenge wrongs done to them- 
selves. The exploiting classes must have felt grave 
alarm at this sudden manifestation of real Chris- 
tianity. If it continued to spread it would revolu- 
tionize the whole civilized order. Therefore, they 
were persecuted alike by Protestants and Catho- 
lics, by the ecclesiastical and secular rulers who 
eagerly accepted the role of the wolves. 

In 1526 by edict the Zurich Rath (Protestant) 
threatened with death by drowning all who were 
baptized anew. Three years later the Catholic Em- 
peror Charles V ordered all Anabaptists wherever 
found to be put to death by fire or sword without even 
the form of a trial. Many were cast into prison 



The So- Called Reformation 235 

and met death at the stake or by drowning. Sebas- 
tian Frank asserts that the number of these truly 
Christian martyrs had reached two thousand by 
the year 1530. 

In all these persecutions they showed the spirit 
of Jesus' exhortation: "Rejoice and be exceeding 
glad, for so persecuted they the prophets which 
were before you." As the Polish Cardinal, the 
Bishop of Warmice, wrote of them : 

"They are far readier than the followers of Luther and 
Zwingli to meet death, and bear the hardest tortures for 
their faith. For they run to suffer punishments, no 
matter how horrible, as if to banquet." . . - 1 

Having seen the fate of these true adherents of 
the prophetic program of Jesus at the hands of His 
nominal adherents, it remains to examine the in- 
ternal organizations as they were given the short- 
lived opportunity to work them out. Their best 
opportunity was found in Moravia which early 
became a refuge for the Anabaptists and remained 
so till the year 1526 when the Province fell to the 
rule of the House of Austria, when their protection 
was withdrawn. Here in a brief space they worked 
out their community ideas. 

There were here, at one time, eighty-six "house- 
holds," 

Under the system which Hutter is mainly credited with 
developing, there was over each household one who took 

1 Quoted in Encyl. Brit. Article "Anabaptists." 



236 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

the general superintendence, who was called the "house- 
holder." With him were a number of persons called 
"ministers of the necessities." Each household had a 
common kitchen, common bakehouse, common brew- 
house, a common room for child-birth, a common school- 
house, another room for mothers with young infants, 
and a common nursery in which the community sisters 
looked after the children. Other sisters attended on the 
sick. The old people were cared for with even more pains 
and attention than the young, who were strictly kept 
from the world, no mixed marriages being allowed. No 
idler was permitted in the community. The meals were 
common but each family had its own rooms. In the 
morning, after silent prayer, they all went to work, some 
in the fields, others in the workshops. They put their 
wages into a common box, which was under the care of a 
treasurer. Frugal living and assiduous working brought 
wealth. The communities came to have lands, machinery 
and shops. But their property was not used simply for 
the benefit of the particular community that had earned 
it, but for the whole body of baptized believers. Vice 
was practically unknown; if any evils did arise the only 
punishments resorted to were public reproof, suspension 
of the communion of the Lord's Supper, and finally, 
exclusion from the community. 

It is said that the Moravian communities at this time 
numbered seventy thousand persons. They refused no 
one on account of poverty, if he gave evidence of being 
born again. Their emissaries went in all directions. 1 

By a royal edict in 1535 King Ferdinand ordered 
the Anabaptists expelled and the Moravian Diet 
agreed. Hutter, their great organizer, was tortured 

1 Heath, op. cit. pp. 69, 70. 



The So-Called Reformation 237 

and burned in public in Innsbruck on the 24th of 
February, 1536. 

Thus once again the Spirit of Jesus seeking to 
incarnate Itself in the whole life of a community 
was quenched in a baptism of blood and fire by 
those who held their victims to be "heretics" and 
themselves to be true adherents of the Church of 
Christ. 



238 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE RECOVERY OF A LOST CHRISTIANITY 

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the 

throne, 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind Ihe 

dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above 

His Own. 

We turn from the tragic picture of truth upon 
the scaffold to the future vision of that truth upon 
the throne. Truth crucified, defeated, rises ever 
again from the tomb and ascends to the Right 
Hand of God to return again to establish the ever- 
lasting reign of the Republic of God. Though men 
and nations may again and again put God out of 
their hearts and lives yet mankind is continually 
drawn by its supreme highest need to return to God. 
Mankind has always felt and always will feel the 
need of God. If a man rejects the Living God he 
enthrones some idol of his own in the void. Even 
the lowest materialist does this, and the lowest 
type of materialist is the mammon-worshipper, 
the man who translates the highest ideals of life, 
religion, patriotism and art — into terms of com- 
mercialism or exploitation. All exploiters are in 
essence idolaters, whose God is the foe of the Liv- 
ing God. 



Recovery of a Lost Christianity 239 

I 

A system of thought or a " Lebensanschaimng" 
may become an idol placed on the altar of an indi- 
vidual's or a nation's life driving out the Shekinah 
of God. Such a system of thought is found in 
materialistic neo- Darwinism. This creed is the 
chief modern intellectual antagonist of the true 
Christian doctrine. Let us for a moment contrast 
them. Christianity teaches that men are in reality 
spiritual beings. Each individual, however fettered 
to an evolving animal organism, has a transcendent, 
eternal value. Each man, however submerged, is 
1 ' an eternal differentiation of the Absolute. ' ' Chris- 
tianity teaches " the potential equality of all spirits." 
The great heresy is the denial of this doctrine whether 
by precept or by practice. Therefore, the wilful 
subordination of the weaker by the stronger (exploi- 
tation) is the chief deadly sin. The neo-Darwinian 
theory holds the opposite. Weak individuals and 
weak peoples exist to be used, dominated and ex- 
ploited by the strong. This is a modern analogue 
of the tribal idea that God has a few favorites and 
those not His favorites exist only for [the benefit of 
the "chosen people." 

While rejecting all traditional religions, modern 
leaders of thought, particularly in Germany, have 
revived the equivalent of the ancient tribal cults. 
This point of view is clearly brought out in the fol- 
lowing quotation : 

The creed of the Allmacht of a natural selection, based 



240 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

on violent struggle, is the Gospel of the German intel- 
lectuals; all else is illusion and anathema. . . . 

This struggle must not only go on, but it should go on, 
so that this natural law may work out in its cruel, inevi- 
table way, the salvation of the human species. By its 
salvation is meant its desirable natural evolution. The 
human group which is in the most advanced evolutionary 
stage as regards internal organization and form of social 
relationship is best, and should, for the sake of the spe- 
cies, be preserved at the expense of the less advanced, 
the less effective. It should win in the struggle for ex- 
istence, and this struggle should occur precisely that the 
various types may be tested, and the best not only pre- 
served, but put in a position to impose its kind of social 
organization, its Kultur, on the others, or, alternatively, 
to destroy and replace them. 1 

II 

The destiny of mankind will be ultimately de- 
termined by which of these two interpretations of 
life wins the victory over the thought and practice 
of the human race. There are no other alternatives. 
If the Christian doctrine of Heaven on earth does 
not triumph, the evolutionary doctrine will see to 
it that the past and present Hell on earth shall be 
perpetuated. There can be no middle ground be- 
tween the triumph of Heaven and the triumph of 
Hell, and no soul can remain neutral. The neutral 
is already an agent of Hell — a subject of the Em- 
pire of Evil. "He that is not for us is against 

Vernon Kellogg, "Headquarters Nights," Article in Atlantic 
Monthly, August, 1917. 



Recovery of a Lost Christianity 241 

us." The neutral is the enemy of Christ. All the 
prophets press for a decision. " Choose ye this day 
whom ye will serve. If Jehovah (the God of the 
prophets) be God, serve Him; if Baal (the God of 
the cult of the exploiters) be God, serve Him." He 
who hesitates is lost. " No man can serve two mas- 
ters." 

Ill 

The object of this book has been to discover and 
state just what Christianity is. In order to do so 
it has been necessary to distinguish between "His- 
toric Christianity" and the Christianity of the 
Founder. If our quest has been successful the 
following facts have been established: The world's 
greatest need as in the past so to-day is to under- 
stand and follow the Christianity of Christ. One 
of the younger leaders of American philosophical 
thought recently expressed to me the conviction 
that "the discovery and statement of what Chris- 
tianity really is, is the most important service 
which a man can render the world to-day." 

Christianity is not the religion of a cult but tran- 
scends all cults in that it is the ultimate universal 
world-religion adapted to the needs of every individ- 
ual and of every race and of the world taken as a 
whole. Of this religion various cults, large and 
small, are but "broken lights." This universal 
religion was not the discovery of Jesus. He recog- 
nized it as having been in the world before Him and 
as having already been preached by the prophets. 



242 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

We have confined our study to the prophets of 
Israel because they are in the line of the prophetic 
succession of Christianity. The study of compara- 
tive religion is teaching us that prophetism is not 
confined to any race of men. We have now to ad- 
mit that all true prophets are spokesmen of the 
Holy Spirit. These true prophets may be dis- 
cerned by their adherence to the following pro- 
phetic truths : — The infinite worth of the individual ; 
the universal Fatherhood of God ; and the universal 
Divine Community embracing the potential equal- 
ity of all spirits ; and the ultimate solidarity of God 
and mankind in the Divine Community of the King- 
dom of God. Wherever these truths are felt and 
accepted there is the Eternal Logos of God, "the 
Light which enlightens every man;" l there is Chris- 
tianity, there is the transcendent and immanent 
Christ Himself. This truth is embraced in the 
universalism of Jesus and His statement "He that 
is not against us is for us." 

Some day the writings of the prophets of the Far 
East will be gathered together in one volume with 
the prophets of the Near East and of the West into 
a universal "Holy Scripture" of the Kingdom of 
God, and the spiritual forces of the ends of the earth 
shall unite and find universal recognition as the 
Inspired Word of a world community gathered into 
the fold of the Great Shepherd — God. 

1 John 1 : 9 (Moffat's version). 



Recovery of a Lost Christianity 243 

IV 

As we have said "Historic Christianity" has 
fallen far short of the universalism of the Founder. 
Catholicism by its very name asserting a claim to 
universalism has been false to true Catholicity in 
that it has remained the theocratic religion of a 
dominating cult. Protestantism passed over the 
universal ethic and theology of Jesus to accept the 
Pauline view of the elect. This fact was not grasped 
by the late Prof. Royce in his otherwise truly Chris- 
tian contribution, "The Problem of Christianity." 1 

He takes the limited community idea of St. Paul 
and makes its application universal. Thus he sup- 
plements the Pauline idea of the community with 
that of Jesus. In spite of this fact Royce remained 
a Protestant in spirit though a Christian in theory. 
This came out in his unhappy bitterness toward 
the German people after the beginning of the world 
war. His Protestantism prevented him from mak- 
ing an application of the difficult principle of Jesus' 
"Love your enemies," to those whom he considered 
the enemies of the universal community. But in 
regard to this it is to be said that Royce's abiding 
influence will proceed from that which he said 
while on the heights rather than from the sad ut- 
terances of one in the depths of disappointed sorrow. 

The supernatural character of Christianity comes 
out in contrast to the best of human philosophy in its 
possession of undying hope, and men of Christian 

1 See above, p. 166. 
18 



244 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

vision are seeing even in the presence of this dark- 
ness strong reasons for hope that Christianity, that 
is, real Christianity, is about to come into its own. 
There are two reasons which we will now mention 
both of which appear paradoxical. The first is the 
recognition quite commonly made that the Chris- 
tianity of the cult is not the Christianity of the 
Founder. The colossal inconsistency of nations 
praying to the same God for strength to injure 
other nations is clearly seen. Also, the claim of 
one nation that God regards it as His chosen people 
provokes the derisive mirth of those who have ceased 
to fear the ancient tribal God. The second reason 
for hopefulness lies in that which the adherents of 
the cult have held to be discouraging, namely, the 
loss of the hold of the organized Christian bodies 
as such on the minds alike of intellectual leaders 
and of the estranged " masses." This would in- 
deed be discouraging if it meant that men were re- 
jecting the cult ethic and the cult theology and its 
organized representatives because they felt no need 
of the true God and of the coming of His Kingdom. 
On the contrary, an appreciation of the ethic and 
and theology of Jesus is nowhere more enlightened 
than it is among many who have rejected " Historic 
Christianity." This is the theme of a book which 
has recently appeared which in spite of a failure of 
insight on important problems on the part of its 
author nevertheless expresses the central truth of 
importance. The fact which we have just stated 
is brought out in the following quotation from H. 



Recovery of a Lost Christianity 245 

G. Wells's "God the Invisible King," quoted with 
approval on the cover of a recent number of The 
Churchman. 

All mankind is seeking God. There is not a nation 
nor a city in the globe where men are not being urged at 
this moment by the Spirit of God in them towards the 
discovery of God. This is not an age of despair, but an 
age of hope in Asia as in all the world besides. The King- 
dom of God on earth is not a metaphor, not a mere spirit- 
ual state, not a dream, not an uncertain project; it is 
the thing before us, it is the close and inevitable destiny 
of mankind. In but a few centuries God will have led 
us out of the dark forest of these present wars and con- 
fusions into the open brotherhood of His rule. God 
takes all. He takes you, blood and bones and house and 
acres, He takes skill and influence and expectation. For 
all the rest of your life you are nothing but God's agent. 

Mr. Wells's chief defect is his failure to discover 
that the best part of his religion is but a restate- 
ment of the Gospel of Jesus and in his failure to real- 
ize that we are not merely the "agents," but also 
the eternal sons of the everlasting, ultimately victo- 
rious and triumphant Eternal God, Who is achiev- 
ing the infinitude which Wells seems to deny Him. 

V 

The most serious problem is what to do with the 
existing cults. They are at present the most diffi- 
cult obstacles in the way of the realization of the 
Kingdom of God. This in spite of the fact, per- 
haps because of it, that they hold themselves to be 
the true and final channels of the Kingdom. They 



246 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

are competitors of the Kingdom because their ad- 
herents believe that the most important thing they 
can do is to build up the cult if need be at the ex- 
pense of all other cults. They teach their adher- 
ents, and require their ministers to teach, that the 
traditional theology which their founders formulated 
is the highest expression of theological truth and 
when real Christianity arises to show the falsity and . 
limitations of their interpretations they are ready 
to cast it out, together with its adherents, as hereti- 
cal. The minister of a Church instead of being 
primarily a prophet of the Kingdom is a leader of 
a localized branch of his cult and his first task is to 
extend its membership, its influence, and its income. 
His own success is measured by the extent to which 
he can make his parish or congregation prosperous. 

As the existing Churches are organized on the 
basis of an exploiting economic system and as he 
must win the allegiance of the successful men of the 
community, usually members of exploiting classes, 
in order to succeed, the minister must become the 
beneficiary of exploitation. Either he must break 
with the established order or renounce success, as 
usually understood. He must become a prophesier 
of smooth things, a false prophet, or else risk such 
dangers as have confronted the true prophets in all 
ages, and bear the odium of denominational disloy- 
alty and heresy. 

Yet the situation is not altogether hopeless. Each 
denomination is founded, in its own view, on the 
pure teaching of Christ and His Leadership. The 



Recovery of a Lost Christianity 247 

man who is loyal to these is loyal to the higher al- 
legiance of the cult itself, even though he rejects 
the traditional interpretation of the cult's theology. 
It is the duty, therefore, of every Christian minister 
to teach the theology of Jesus as clearly as he may 
be able to comprehend it, no matter where it con- 
flicts with the inherited opinion of his sect. He 
may do this with a better hope because of the large 
number within all the cults who have already swung 
aw r ay from and abandoned the inadequate theology 
of the cults' founders. The following practical sug- 
gestion of Royce is here very much in place: 

What is practically necessary, therefore, is this: Let 
your Christology be the practical acknowledgment of the 
Spirit of the universal and beloved community. This 
is the sufficient and practical faith. Love this faith, 
teach this faith, preach this faith, in whatever words, 
through whatever symbol, by means of whatever forms 
of creeds, in accordance with whatever practices you 
find best to enable you with sincere intent and a whole 
heart to symbolize and to realize the Spirit in the com- 
munity. 1 

Judge every social device, every proposed reform and 
every local enterprise by the one test: Does this help 
towards the coming of the universal community? If 
you have a church, judge your own church by this stand- 
ard; and if your own church does not yet fully meet this 
standard, aid in reforming your church accordingly. 
If . . . you hold the true church to be invisible, require 
all whom you can influence to help render it visible. 2 

1 "The Problem of Christianity," vol. II, p. 428. 

2 Op. cit. vol. II, p. 431. 



248 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

The principle of Jesus "Whoso seeketh to save 
his life shall lose it, and whoso loseth his life for My 
sake and the Gospel's, shall find it," should be taken 
by the cults as their immediate guide. The cult 
exists only for the Kingdom and it should seek to 
die, if necessary, in order that its sacrificial death 
may usher in the Kingdom and that it may live 
again as a part of the Universal Community. 

The failure of "Historic Christianity" to realize 
this goal has been due to "the combined wayward- 
ness of the religious caprices of all Christian man- 
kind" (Royce). One who has had experience in 
modern Church life must feel that whereas way- 
wardness and caprice are still strong in the cults, 
in view of the seriousness of the eternal issues in- 
volved, it is high time for the cults to waive all 
petty questions and seek to lose their lives in the 
true Church of Christ. 

For the true Church ... is still a sort of ideal chal- 
lenge to the faithful, rather than an already fulfilled 
institution — a call upon men for a heavenly quest, rather 
than a present possession of humanity. " Create me" — 
this is the word that the Church, viewed as an idea, ad- 
dresses to mankind. 1 

VI 

Educational institutions should have a large 
share in contributing to the campaign of education 
for the spread of an understanding of what Chris- 
tianity really is. The department of literature 
should teach the results of scientific literary criti- 

1 Royce, op. cit. vol. I, p. 54. 



Recovery of a Lost Christianity 249 

cism of Biblical literature. The department of 
philosophy should include courses on the apprecia- 
tion of the intellectual value of a theology of the 
prophets and of Jesus. The course in ethics should 
lay chief stress upon the universal absolute ethics 
of Jesus. The department of economics has a won- 
derful opportunity to show how the law of service 
could be made the basis of economic life in produc- 
tion and distribution, and how the present system 
of exploitation could be made to give way to a social 
organization animated by the teachings of Jesus. 
The department of history should present a scien- 
tific impartial account of Church History and insti- 
tutions, showing wherein they succeeded or failed 
in expressing the underlying thought and Mind 
of the Master. Every well-equipped University 
should have courses in Comparative Religion which 
should aim to discover and recognize the principles 
of the universal religion wherever found. 

VII 

The greatest opportunities from the educational 
point of view remain with the institutions of the 
Christian family and of the converted Christian 
parish or congregation. At present parents with 
liberal views hesitate to teach their convictions 
about religion to their children out of a false rever- 
ence for the traditional orthodox views which they 
themselves have rejected. The opportunity of 
the father and mother is vast when we recall that 
they deal with those who are by nature members 



250 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

of the Kingdom of Heaven. In teaching religion 
to their children parents should also remember the 
advice of Jesus to learn about the Kingdom from the 
children themselves. This will teach them the 
proper reverence for childhood which must lie at 
the basis of every happy family life. 

The educational opportunities of the converted 
parish church or congregation are almost as great. 
We already have churches which gladly welcome 
the preaching of the "Social Gospel." At present 
this is generally rather tolerated than taken as a 
practical program of the parish life. The "Social 
Service" of the parish in the main is usually con- 
fined to the employment of a staff of paid social 
workers, "Parish Visitors," "Visiting Nurses," 
and the like. What is needed is an application of 
this principle to the total parish life. The social 
Gospel of the prophets and Jesus should be dis- 
criminatingly taught in the Sunday Schools, and 
the laity should recognize the demands which that 
Gospel makes upon them in the effort toward the 
purifying and reorganizing of the life of the com- 
munity. The prophetic Gospel was a "lay Gospel." 
It consists not merely in words or ceremonial acts 
but in a life of service. It demands not merely 
"sayers" but "doers." The laity are those who 
must finally abolish the evils of exploitation and 
reorganize our economic system on the basis of serv- 
ice. The Churches can only continue to survive if 
they contribute to a new and final reformation not 
restricted to the idea of the Church itself as a sepa- 



Recovery of a Lost Christianity 251 

rate institution, not even restricted to the idea of 
organized Christianity saving itself by pooling its 
interests in one great unified religious cult, but a 
reformation contemplating the whole program of 
Jesus Christ for world redemption. 

VIII 

One portion of the Church's opportunity for 
serving the interests of the community, it has ap- 
preciated perhaps better than the rest, namely, 
the moulding of the individual life through teaching 
men to pray — both privately and in common wor- 
ship. Prayer concerns the very well-springs of 
life and character. It is the primary means of at- 
taining the God-consciousness apart from which 
there would be no basis for the hope of the Kingdom 
of God, but even in this department the Church 
can render far greater service than ever in the past, 
by making its services conform to the larger vision 
of the real teaching of Christ and bringing it into 
conscious relationship with the coming of the King- 
dom. To do this it requires nothing more than to 
interpret and extend its universal model the " Lord's 
Prayer." Men put the highest and best of them- 
selves into prayer. They must extend this into 
the life of the community. The ideal is expressed 
as the movement to incarnate the Spirit of Jesus 
in humanity beginning with the smaller units of 
the community and extending that Spirit by the 
leavening process till the whole of mankind is trans- 
formed into the Body of Christ. 



252 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

IX 

So far but little has been said on the question of 
individual immortality. This doctrine is found 
only by implication in the teachings of the prophets 
and is but little stressed in the teachings of Jesus. 
This contrasts with the attitude of the Mystery 
Cults whether Greek or Christian which make the 
achievement of a happy immortality the first object 
of their quest. 

Jesus warned men against this quest as liable 
to defeat its own end. Yet His thought becomes 
utterly unintelligible unless the doctrine of individ- 
ual immortality is recognized as everywhere under- 
lying His teaching. It is inseparable from the doc- 
trine of the infinite value of the individual man. 
Once this idea is acted upon, a belief in immortality 
becomes natural and inevitable instead of being an 
effort to trust "the larger hope." One reason why 
the quest for immortality is not stressed by Jesus 
is because He believed it the present possession of 
all men. 

The doctrine of immortality is obscured and 
weakened by our common social practices in treat- 
ing men as objects to be exploited. As it was a 
principle of the Kantian ethic always to treat hu- 
manity as a person and never as a thing, much more 
was it the underlying precept of the ethics of Jesus. 
Men who live up to this cannot doubt immortality. 
It will become a perfectly natural and spontaneous 
belief on the part of all men in a community which 



Recovery of a Lost Christianity 253 

treats individuals as immortal and not as mere 
wheels or parts in an economic machine. 

One aspect of the aspiration after immortality 
is the ambition of men to achieve greatness. 

The quest for greatness and the leaving behind 
of an immortal name has too commonly followed 
the line of ambitious exploitation. It has sought 
the greatness of the individual through the subor- 
dination of other individuals. The folly and empti- 
ness of this kind of fame and greatness has been 
set forth by all great thinkers and by the poets of 
real insight into life who could not yet set aside 
their own desire for greatness. For after all, great- 
ness is inherent in the idea of the full development 
of every man. Greatness truly conceived must be 
democratized and universalized. It must be pos- 
sible for every man who strives for the mastery 
to win the prize. 

Jesus points the way through which alone any 
may become great and at the same time the way 
in which the attainment of greatness is open to all 
men and may become their common possession. 
He points the goal of the highest ambition in the law 
of service. This ambition He proclaims as the chief 
end of His Own Mission. He Himself came not to 
exploit but to serve — "Not to be ministered unto 
but to minister." He defines true greatness and 
universalizes it in one sentence "He that would 
be greatest among you, let him be the servant of all." 
Thus ambition is not destroyed but directed to the 
only true goal. 



254 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

In solving the problem of human existence Jesus 
also interprets the meaning of the physical universe. 
It is the Father's house of many mansions. The 
stars, the suns, and their encircling universes of 
planets are the eternal dwelling places of the Spirits 
and serve the ends of spiritual beings. By this 
thought the whole bulk of physical matter is sacra- 
mentalized — becomes sacred. The material uni- 
verses already obey the rule of God in the only way 
which impersonal objects can, through obedience 
to the reign of law. Eternal spiritual beings like 
men cannot thus be ruled by external compulsion 
but through moral influence. When men have 
come voluntarily to find their places in the Home 
and Family of God and shall have established the 
universal Reign of God in their own lives and in 
the lives of the Universal Community they will then 
find themselves at home in the splendid material 
universe the only worthy House of God which even 
so cannot contain Him. But what material uni- 
verses cannot do, any individual man may be able 
to do — contain the whole life of God within himself. 
This is the ultimate goal of human individuals and 
till it has been reached and the Kingdom established 
on earth, we may not cease to pray — 

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done On Earth As 
It Is In Heaven. Amen, So Be It, Lord. 

X 

In the present crisis humanity again stands at the 
parting of the ways. Once again the Eternal Al- 



Recovery of a Lost Christianity 255 

ternative presents itself afresh, False Messiahs 
have come claiming to be the Lord's Chosen and 
Anointed Ones and have indeed deceived the very 
elect, who have fallen down and worshipped the 
Devil who promised them all the kingdoms of the 
earth as a reward for submission. The diabolical 
instruments of fomented hatreds, fair and lying 
words, broken faith, collective assassinations have 
been invoked in behalf of a world Kultur based 
upon force. The bribe which the true Messiah 
spurned on the Mount of Temptation has been 
eagerly embraced by those who claimed the Divine 
right through God's grace to shatter the nations 
and shepherd them with the iron flail of a tribal 
demi-god. The Judas bribe has increased from 
thirty silver pieces to no less than the world itself. 
For centuries self-styled Christians have been 
carrying on a side enterprise in exploitation. Now 
the issue has been brought to its logical culmination 
and attained cosmic proportions. The world is 
• reaping the fruits of the leadership of false Messiahs. 
Satan is paying back the harvest of tares. The 
hour of the Kingdom has again struck. Will man- 
kind repudiate its false Messiahs, its demi-gods, its 
mammons? Will it heed the Message of the true 
Messiah, the Son of Man? 

Jesus preached but one sermon — He had but one 
theme — the Kingdom of God, — the way and the 
means of its coming. His followers to-day should 
take up and echo that strain till it reverberate in 
the thundertones of a great multitude of prophetic 



256 Religion: Its Prophets and False Prophets 

messengers — " Repent ye, for the reign of God is 
at hand ." ' ' Repent ' ' — that is — ' ' Get a new mind ; ' ' 
"Get a new insight into the real meaning of life and 
reorganize your own life in union with it" — "See 
world history in the light of the Will and Plan of 
God and set your own will in co-operation with 
His." 

Let Omar and his cult turn from the mournful 
plaint — 

Ah Love, could you and I with Him conspire, 
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire — 
Would not we shatter it to bits — and then 
Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire? 

and let the men of this generation arise — and now 
if the shattering process has gone far enough, — 
let collective humanity under God remould "the 
scheme of things entire" nearer to the desire of the 
battered, bleeding, broken hearts of the sons and 
daughters of men — nearer to the heart of the suf- 
fering Son of Man — nearer to the Heart and Mind 
of the Universal God and Father of all souls. 



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